


Backwards Land

by dragoninatrenchcoat



Series: Out of the Nick of Time [7]
Category: Forever (TV 2014)
Genre: Gen, also there’s an oc but she’s a minor character, casefic, cw ableism - psychopathy, does it count as casefic if the case is from the show, mostly she just comes from the fact that lucas has not at all been developed, ok I did make up a few new details
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-13
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:46:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 26,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27547798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragoninatrenchcoat/pseuds/dragoninatrenchcoat
Summary: What if Henry wasn’t spotted coming out of the water?In Episode 11,Skinny Dipper,a fateful taxi-related death and subsequent indecent exposure arrest set off a chain of events which almost wind up with Henry behind bars. How would he have fared if he hadn’t been arrested that night, and instead made plans with Abe to skip town? Would Adam’s attempted framing have stuck?*Originally uploaded under the titlePaid Time Off.Disclaimer: this is not guaranteed to be a reveal. Like all OotNoT stories, I recommend rewatching the correlating episode just before reading the story, but that’s certainly not required.
Relationships: Jo Martinez & Henry Morgan
Series: Out of the Nick of Time [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1880338
Comments: 35
Kudos: 62





	1. The Taxi

**Author's Note:**

> I’m aware that Lucas’s freedom of responsibility would not be OK in an actual morgue. I just kind of took Henry’s lackadaisical attitude from that one scene in The Art of Murder and ran with it

“Where’s Henry?” asked Jo’s voice.

Lucas shot to his feet, nearly clipping his head on the hanging lamp as he whirled around. Both of the detectives had gotten pretty close behind him, approaching from the opposite side of the body, and now watched him expectantly.

“Detective Martinez!” Lucas exclaimed. “Detective Hanson! Hello. Dr. Morgan took PTO today.”

Jo frowned. “That’s weird. Henry took a day off?”

Lucas shrugged and couldn’t help a short laugh. “Yeah, that’s just about what I said. You know, I’ve been working with him for a while and this is the first time he’s taken a whole day off? The man doesn’t even get sick, it’s uncanny. Anyway, he gave me full authority to be him until he gets back.” He puffed out his chest. “I guess he’s noticed my rising stardom.”

Mike strolled forward, hands in his pockets. “Full authority?” 

“Well, mostly,” Lucas afforded. “I can do everything except sign off. Dr. Washington had to confirm the time and cause of death, but all he did was review what I’d done and sign it.” He smiled. “Not bad, huh?”

Jo nodded. “Alright. So, what have you got?”

Lucas nodded and retreated to the far side of the body, the better to show off his clever deductions. He took a quick breath of sterile morgue air and gestured open-handed to the small slice in the middle of the chest.

“As you can see, Raj here was stabbed. But not just stabbed; the blade went all the way through. Expertly aimed, too, would’ve had to be a strong thrust.” He exhibited this with a sweeping push, like a quick stab. Then he looked at her over his own shoulder with a grin. “He was killed with a sword.”

“A sword?” Mike echoed.

“I know, right? My first day working alone, and I get a sword killer. How cool is that?”

Jo held out her hand. “Lucas, stay focused.”

“Right.” He cleared his throat. “I can’t be totally sure, but it looks like it might be a curved blade. Like a katana. Of course, the length can’t be determined here, so it might not specifically be a katana. It could be a chisa katana or a wakizashi. But I can tell that it isn’t a tanto blade at least.” He chuckled.

“Okay,” said Mike, almost like a question.

“Um. I think he was stabbed from behind.” Lucas pointed out the wound again, gesturing upward. “In the back and out through the front, right through the heart. Seems like a tough angle to make in one go.”

Jo frowned. “All that to steal a cab?”

“His cab was stolen?”

Mike nodded. “His manager said he’d never come back in at the end of his shift last night.”

Lucas leaned heavily against the table. “Well, unless his shift ended before 8:15 PM, I’m willing to bet he had a pretty good reason.”

“That’s the time of death?” Jo asked.

“Yes, sir. Ma’am,” he corrected himself.

Mike’s phone rang, and he stepped aside to answer it.

“Alright,” said Jo. “What else do you have?”

She’d gotten used to Henry’s X-ray vision, the way he could look at a person’s hands and guess how long they’d been failing to learn the guitar. Lucas knew he was no Henry--no one was--but he had his own tricks.

He pulled out a yellow folder, sliding one finger along the smooth papers. “The tox report came back clean. No drugs or alcohol, but he has recently gotten a hepatitis B vaccination. Not exactly run-of-the-mill for cabbies. My guess is, either he’s recently started dating someone who has it, or maybe he had a job at a hospital.” Lucas slipped the folder shut and cradled it under one arm. “I volunteered at a hospital once, and I wasn’t even a nurse, but the vaccinations alone--they just kind of jam them all in there, you know. Felt like I was a Nazi in a Captain America comic. Not that I’m a Nazi,” he added quickly. “Just, you know, because he punches Nazis, and I felt like I’d been punched. I know the name Wahl sounds German, but it’s actually sort of Italian--wait, that’s not much better-”

Jo raised her eyebrows. “Alright, thank you, Lucas.”

“Okay, yeah, no problem.” He decided to shut his mouth.

Mike paced back over. “Water cops found something submerged in the Hudson right off of Pier 40.” He gestured to Raj. “It’s our taxi. They’re pulling it out now.”

Jo turned to Lucas. “Okay,  _ Henry,”  _ she said with an odd sort of emphasis, “Want a lift to the scene?”

He started. “You want me to-?”

Mike shrugged. “Henry said you were him, right?”

Lucas swallowed. “Yes. Yes! I’ll get my- I would like a ride, yeah, I’ll be there in a second. Just one second.”

#

“You guys... drive together a lot?” Lucas asked from the back seat. “The three of you, I mean.”

Mike glanced back at him, but didn’t answer.

“To crime scenes. It would make sense. No point in caravanning over if you’re all coming from work, right?”

There wasn’t even any music playing. Lucas gave up, watching the rippling waterline from his window until Jo parked the car halfway down the pier.

Lucas followed them out, tugging on his gloves as they made their way toward the waterlogged taxi.

He shouldn’t have come, really. He wasn’t an investigator; Henry was only allowed out on these things because he was practically Sherlock. If there wasn’t a body, Lucas wouldn’t have much to examine. Jo and Mike were humoring him. That much was obvious.

But still. To live a day in Henry’s shoes... what would be cooler than that?

Jo leaned in to the driver’s side of the taxi while Mike walked around to the passenger, so Lucas dipped his head into the backseat.

Lucas had been to crime scenes before, but somehow, a crime scene without a body was spookier. Like a puzzle with a giant piece missing, except you couldn’t be sure what the piece was even shaped like unless you’d taken it out yourself.

“There’s your sword,” Jo said, pointing to the front of the driver’s seat. “It looks like it went right through.”

Lucas prodded the back and found a perfectly neat slice mark, exactly as in Raj’s body. “Yeah. Wow, good aim.”

“Alright, what’s the theory here?” Mike asked, crouching outside the passenger door. “Passenger with sword stabs Raj, the driver, when he stopped. Passenger dumps the body, drives here, and then launches the cab into the Hudson? Is that it?”

Jo turned to the driver’s door. “Hey, look at this window. These fragments make it look like it was blown out from the inside.”

Lucas climbed a little farther into the car, into the smell of fish and new-car soap, so he could peer around the driver’s seat and look at the window. It was shattered, a thousand spiderwebby cracks.

Mike picked up something from the passenger floor. “No. It was shot out.”

He held up a gun casing. Lucas hadn’t actually seen one before, not in person. Bullets, sure, but not a lot of people got the casings stuck in their body when they died.

“Somebody fired a gun?” Jo asked.

Mike shrugged. “Maybe the cabbie tried to shoot the passenger.”

“The angle’s wrong,” Jo said distractedly, leaning in to scan the car. “And Raj didn’t own a gun. At least, not one registered to him.”

Lucas slid a little farther into the cab to hunt around for clues, in case he could actually be helpful.

Mike held up his find. “You ever seen a casing like this? My father was a gun collector. This...”

Lucas’s eyes focused on the inner side of the door, and suddenly he couldn’t hear Mike.

He’d seen a lot of scary stuff. Made some, too, as his short film portfolio could attest. But it had always been scary body stuff: gashes, gunshots, people getting decapitated. He’d once worked on a case where a guy’s face had been clawed off, and another one with seventeen separate stab wounds, like someone had wanted to make absolutely certain the guy died.

But these scratch marks on the door, like those left by a wild animal, were somehow worse.

“Lucas?” Jo asked.

He found he couldn’t look away from them. She followed his gaze.

“Whoa. Looks like somebody was desperate to get out. Do you think-” She paused. “Lucas?”

He took a sharp breath and looked up at her. “Hmm?”

“You okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah, no big deal, yeah. What?”

She nodded to the door. “You think we can pull DNA off those scratches?”

“Oh- yeah! Maybe. Hold on.” He pulled out a little swab kit he’d brought with him, focusing his entire will on not fumbling while Jo was watching.

He’d seen the bodies of people who’d drowned in cars. The bloatation, oxygen deprivation in the brain, asphyxiation. He knew all the signs. Drowned victims were sometimes the worst ones to look at, but he could look at them, study them, cut them apart, no sweat. He even wrote a script about someone drowning in a car, although that one never got made. Too high budget.

But these scratches looked... primal. Whoever’d tried to get out of this car had been gripped by a terror Lucas had never experienced.

Yeah. Crime scenes without bodies were infinitely creepier.

If he wanted to be Henry, though, he’d have to buckle up and get used to it. He pulled out a small magnifying glass and leaned in, searching for nail or skin tissue that might have broken off in the fabric of the door. That, at least, was comfortably similar to his routine work, scouring bodies for tiny foreign matter they could analyze. All he had to do was pretend the car fabric was a weird sort of hairy skin.

“Wait,” said Jo’s voice from the other side of the car, more urgently than anything else that’d been said. “Hanson.”

Lucas wanted to look, but if he paused at this, he’d practically have to start over.

Mike said, “Is that Dr. Morgan’s watch?”

Lucas whirled around to see Jo pick up Henry’s pocket watch from the floor of the cab, glittering gold against the dark grey fabric.

“What the hell is it doing here?” Mike continued.

“Henry-” Lucas caught himself. “Dr. Morgan was here? In this cab?”

Jo looked up at him. “Lucas, what was the time of death? Eight?”

“Eight fifteen, yeah.”

“Huh.”

Mike leaned in. “What is it?”

“Henry got into a cab at 8:30 or so last night. It was the last time I saw him.”

“I heard from him this morning,” Lucas said quickly, before the world had a chance to coalesce the story Jo was trying to paint. “I heard him on the phone when he called in to take the day off.”

“Which he never takes,” said Mike.

Lucas continued, adamant, “So he definitely wasn’t the person who drowned in this car.”

“Wait,” said Jo. “What makes you think someone was in the taxi when it went in the water?”

“What do you mean? Look at the scratches.” He pointed them out. “If someone’s trapped in a taxi above ground, they’ll try to get out through the window, right? It’s weaker and there’s more of a chance of being noticed. If the car’s underwater, the window’s just as impossible to get through as any other part of the car. They start panicking, they dig through the walls. Also, look.” He traced the scratches up to the roof of the car. “No one tries to get out through the top of a car.”

“Unless that’s where the air is,” Jo finished. “But if someone drowned here, then where’s the body?”

Lucas frowned. He hadn’t thought of that; he’d seen this as a package-deal ‘crime scene with no body’. That the body in question was missing hadn’t occurred to him as any weirder than that the driver’s body was.

He spotted the broken driver’s window. Could the victim have escaped? He tapped on the plastic between the front and back seats, testing its strength. It didn’t seem broken or compromised in any way.

“Huh,” he said. “Maybe... they got a door open and it closed behind them?”

“Nope,” said Mike. “The doors were all locked when it was fished out.”

“Well, I guess these scratches could’ve been made before it went in the water,” he said dubiously. “Must have been some kind of imminent threat, though, and some reason not to try the window.”

Jo peered into the cab. “If you’re panicking, you don’t always see the easy answer.”

“So,” said Lucas, “after the cab was stolen, but before it went in the water, someone was trapped in here and panicking. I mean really, bottom-of-the-line panicking. And then they just got out?”

“Or they were let out,” Mike suggested.

“We need to talk to Henry,” said Jo.

The fear came back, sharp and hot, along with an unwelcome image of Henry Morgan frantically scratching at the sides of the car.

Lucas turned back to the taxi door, employing the focus-breathing tactic he’d learned in college. He needed to work fast, to find out who the person was that’d been trapped in the backseat of a taxi--and more importantly, to rule out Henry Morgan.

#

There was nothing. The scratches were completely clean. Sure, the river water could have dislodged and washed away most of it, but they were  _ completely _ clean.

Lucas had waved off Jo and Mike, telling them he’d get a taxi--or, some other way back to the precinct, so they could go find Henry. He took his time and went over every scratch twice, then the entirety of the floors, walls, seats, and ceiling. Not one particulate, not one tiny hair or skin fragment. When he moved his inspection to the front half of the car, he found a couple droplets of blood clinging to the inside of the seat’s stab wound; Raj’s blood, probably. He took a sample anyway.

When he finally estimated that he’d done all he could, he walked away from the pier, leaving the grumbling workers to finally take the wreck to the precinct.

He knew he was thorough. It was why Henry hadn’t gotten rid of him yet; he had no doubts that if he’d been an average worker, Henry would have found a way to swap him out on account of his mouth alone. Lucas liked to think that the quality of his work gave him the liberty to try to talk to Henry, and potentially crack that shell he had around him and worm his way into being the guy’s friend. 

If Henry was the one that’d spent any amount of time panicked and trapped in a taxi, why hadn’t he come clean about it last night, or even this morning on the phone?  _ Hey, Lucas, I won’t be coming in today. I’m not sick, I just really need a break; almost dying in a taxi will do that to you. _ Would that have been so hard?

He still couldn’t help but picture Henry scrabbling against the door, trying to pull it open, scratching panicked at the ceiling.

It didn’t add up. He still thought the scratches looked more like a drowning victim than someone who’d only been locked in. But there was no way out of the car; there should have been a body. Maybe someone had put the scratchmarks there on purpose? Someone shooting a short horror film with the budget to trash a taxi?

No. Why would someone stab an innocent man with a sword just to make a film prop? Nothing added up. See, this was why he wasn’t an investigator. He shouldn’t even have come along in the first place.


	2. Henry Morgan

Jo stopped outside Abe’s Antiques and glanced back at Mike, who frowned at the sign on the door.

“By appointment only,” he read out loud. “Who needs an appointment to buy antiques?”

The door was locked, so she knocked on the glass, trying not to feel nervous. Whatever had happened, Henry would have an explanation. The trouble was, he was so secretive by default that she wasn’t sure whether he would actually give it to her.

Abe appeared at the back of the shop and made his way across to the front door, with easy and open body language. He unlocked the door and opened it with a smile.

“Hey, Jo. Detective Hanson.”

“Hi, Abe,” said Jo. “Look, I know he took the day off, but we need to speak with Henry.”

His eyebrows went up, then he stepped aside. “Alright, well, come in, then.”

Jo stepped into the cushion of dusty air and gestured to the sign, while Hanson walked around her. “By appointment only?”

Abe waved a hand. “Yeah. I’m not having a great day today, you know, the ol’ back again. ‘By appointment only’ is just my way of being free to take a nap without missing out on a few sales.” He chuckled. “Yeah, make yourselves comfortable, I’ll go find Henry.”

“Would Dr. Morgan do that?” Mike asked her quietly. “Get trapped and assaulted in a taxi, then take the next day off instead of telling anyone about it?”

“I don’t know,” Jo answered. It troubled her that she really didn’t know.

Henry had proven himself over time to hold himself to an unusual set of moral obligations. Every time he got invested in a case, he dove too far in and became overzealous, stepping around regulations, sometimes even laws. Whenever Jo or Mike--both sworn police officers with extensive crisis training--seemed to come under threat, Henry was the first person leaping out of the sidelines to save them.

But no matter how close they grew, he never seemed truly comfortable talking to Jo. He’d started once or twice, like when he’d begun to tell her the story of the scar on his chest, but he’d inevitably get interrupted and drop it forever.

If he had been trapped in the backseat of a taxi last night, _ would _ he have told anyone about it? She really wasn’t sure.

Henry came up from the basement, smiling as easily as Abe, wearing a simpler version of one of his typical suits. “Did you miss me?” he asked. “I know it’s the first day off I’ve ever taken, but-”

Mike asked, “Where’s your watch, Henry?”

Henry paused. “My watch?”

“Yeah. Your pocket watch. Where is it?”

He felt his pocket, then glanced around behind him. “I’m not sure. I-” He paused.

The strange thing about Henry was that, for all his secrets, he was actually a terrible liar. Jo crossed her arms and watched him piece together a lie, right in front of her.

He snapped his fingers. “I must have left it in the taxi last night.”

“The taxi?” Mike asked.

“Yes. Abe has me taking taxis now, after I was...” He cleared his throat rather than mention his own kidnapping.

Jo asked, “When did you get home last night?”

“I don’t know, exactly. Nine? I didn’t have my watch,” he added with a chuckle.

Mike said, “You must have checked the time in the cab. That’s how you dropped it, right?”

“Yes, I remember it being around 8:40.” Henry frowned, glancing between them. “Why? Did something happen?”

Jo took a breath, hesitated, then spoke anyway. “Henry, your watch was found in a stolen taxi at the bottom of the Hudson.”

His eyebrows went up. “What? Stolen?”

“By the time you entered it, the cab’s original driver had been dead by roughly fifteen minutes.”

He let out a long breath, hands on his hips. “Wow. But why would someone kill a cab driver just to take an additional fare? If I’d paid with credit, it would have gone directly to the driver’s account, wouldn’t it? Not a very sound way to steal someone’s job.”

“Did you pay with credit?” Mike asked.

“No, I prefer cash.”

“Henry,” said Jo, drawing his attention. “What did the driver look like?”

“The driver?” he asked. “The... killer, you mean?”

Jo nodded. Henry’s look sobered and he put his hands in his pockets, like she’d reminded him of something he really wouldn’t prefer to revisit.

“I... didn’t get a good look at his face, actually.”

It wasn’t a lie, but it still smelled like one.

She took a step forward, into his space, lowering her voice. “Henry. If something happened last night, you know you can tell us.”

Henry glanced between them. To Jo, who had come to know him pretty well, the guilt on his face was obvious. Then he smiled.

“I know I can,” he said. “Thank you. And I wish I could help you, but I’m afraid I didn’t see the driver’s face. As far as I was aware, it was a perfectly normal ride.”

She couldn’t help but feel hurt. After all they’d done together, he couldn’t trust her.

“Alright, thank you.” She gestured to the rest of the shop. “Sorry for disrupting your day off.”

“No trouble at all, Detectives. I only wish I could help more.”

He wasn’t jumping on his feet to help with the case. He didn’t have to, of course, but it felt unusual. He seemed perfectly content to sit this one out, but there was no evidence that he was in the middle of anything important.

“Have a nice day,” said Mike, and they left.

#

Jo shut the car door behind her, and for a moment, she and Mike sat in the silence.

“Look, I don’t know him as well as you,” said Mike, “but is it just me, or was he lying out of his ass?”

“I think some of it was true.” Jo frowned. “But why wouldn’t he trust us with something like this?”

Mike turned toward her. “Do you think he knows the driver?”

“Hanson, if he’d been nearly killed in a car being driven by someone he knows, wouldn’t he have come to us earlier?”

“You know how people can be with revenge.”

“Not Henry,” she said, troubled. “Why would he want to protect someone who’d tried to kill him? I don’t know. I don’t think that’s it.”

“It’s something, though.”

“Yeah.”

#

“Nothing,” Lucas said brusquely, having pulled up a chair beside Jo’s desk. His failure soured in his chest. “There was nothing. I went over all of it twice. Not a single hair or skin cell.”

She smiled. “Thanks for looking, but it probably got washed away in the river.”

“No, there should’ve been something. There’s always something, no matter how small. I found blood in the driver’s seat that would’ve been much easier for river water to clean off than a piece of skin or nail or dried blood stuck in the plastic wall of the door. But there was nothing.”

“Lucas, it’s alright. Relax. These things happen.”

“What about Henry? What did he say?”

She refocused out in the middle distance, wearing something like a frown. “He was in the taxi last night, but he said it was like any other trip. He paid in cash and didn’t get a very good look at the driver. He said he must have dropped his watch.”

A wave of relief rolled through Lucas. Seeing that watch in the same place as those scratches... he’d spent more time than he’d admit worrying over the idea of something so terrifying happening to Dr. Morgan.

Then again, he’d been kidnapped recently, hadn’t he? Lucas hadn’t been able to catch on to the details, but he’d managed to overhear someone talking about electrocution. He shivered.

“Lucas, you alright?” Jo asked.

He nodded. “Yeah. Just frustrated. Um. Also, I know how it sounds, but I swear they still look more like drowning marks to me than anything else. I really think someone drowned in that cab.”

Her eyebrows went up. “Alright, then let me know as soon as you can figure out where the body went.”

He opened his mouth, then closed it. “Right.”

“Thanks, Lucas. You’ve been a big help.”

He doubted that, but he nodded rather than argue the point, and took the opportunity to head back to the safety of the morgue.

#

“Check this out,” said Mike. He handed Jo a thick stack of papers, topped by the casing in its evidence bag. “I took this around to a couple collectors, and they confirmed. It’s a 7.63 by 25 millimeter Mauser cartridge. Specifically, it’s ammo for the Mauser C96 semi-automatic.”

She flipped the pages until she found a picture of an antique gun with a narrow barrel and a blocky internal magazine.

“Okay, so we know the type of gun.”

“Ah-ha.” Mike held up one finger. “More than that. The Mauser C96 is very rare. Only a few people in New York have one registered to them.”

She flipped through and found a long list of names. “A few?” she echoed, thumbing through the pages.

“Hey, it’s a good narrow-down from the whole city, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, it is.” She shook her head. “Sorry. I’m still trying to piece together what happened inside that cab. Raj wasn’t shot. There’s no sign that the gun had anything to do with him.”

“We’re thinking someone was trapped in the cab, right? Maybe they shot at the driver.”

“No, the partition between the front and back was intact. And the gun was most likely fired from the passenger seat.”

“Alright, what if there were three people in the taxi? The thief is driving, the victim in the back, and someone else in the passenger. They shoot the thief, that shot blows out the window, and the victim starts panicking, thinking they’re next. Yeah?”

“There wasn’t any blood on the driver’s seat other than Mr. Patel’s stab wound.”

“Shit. So the gun must have been fired on the window alone. Maybe he was aiming for someone outside. Gunshot that close could still account for the panic scratches in the backseat.”

“Yeah, maybe. I’ll ask Lucas to check Mr. Patel’s body for anything that might indicate a close-range gunshot. Gun residue, burn marks, anything. We need to narrow down the time of night that the gun could have gone off.”

“I’ll ask the Lieutenant for some uniforms to get alibis from this list.”

Jo whistled. “That’s a lot of legwork.”

“Right now, it’s our best lead.” He shrugged. “Unless Henry wants to come up here and start talking.”

“Honestly, Hanson, I have no idea whether or not he knows anything helpful. The way he keeps secrets... it could be something completely unrelated.”

Mike grunted. “Yeah. Could be.”

#

Lucas sat, staring at his report.

He often wished he could see the things Henry saw, the way little details crystallized and pieced together. Jo had asked him to look for evidence of Raj having been near a gun being fired, and he’d found nothing. Which might have meant that Raj had been nowhere near a gun being fired, but it also could mean that Lucas had missed something.

He considered asking for someone’s help, a second pair of eyes, but something stopped him. His own vanity, maybe. He knew his assistance was helpful to Dr. Morgan, but far from necessary. Henry would have been able to do all the work alone if he had to.

But Lucas was no Henry.

“Hey Lucas,” called Mike’s voice. “You’re Henry, right?”

He waved a hand. “No thank you, Detective Hanson. I think I’m better off in here.”

“We need an M.E. We’ve got a body.”

Lucas snapped his head up to see Mike leaning against the wall. “You need an M.E., not a Sherlock?”

He shrugged. “Well, we’d like to have both, but he’s got the day off.”

“Right- yeah, alright.” Lucas pushed his chair back. “Let me get my stuff together.”

“Besides, it sounds like someone’s already done half your job for you.”

“What do you mean?” He pulled a bag over one shoulder.

“Someone’s already done the autopsy.”

#

“The name is Richard Smight,” Jo said as she led Lucas down the hall and into the small, ill-kept apartment. “Officers Waschen and Deere found him when they came by to ask for an alibi for last night; he’s a registered owner of the rare type of gun that was used in the cab. The officers reported that the victim’s door had been left open and they suspected foul play.”

“The victim?” Lucas asked, and they turned the corner to reveal Richard’s body.

It lay flat on a wooden table, well-lit by a set of work lights. Mike had been right; an autopsy had been performed already, skin carefully pulled apart to reveal the familiar shapes of bone and organ.

Most of the officers averted their eyes from the carnage, but Lucas made his way toward it, his eyes scanning over it in his routine way. After what had happened in the cab, he was beyond grateful to have a body to work on. He dropped his bag and finished putting on his gloves, leaning in to get a look, the familiar form of the autopsy inviting him automatically to search for a cause of death.

“Wait a second,” he said, frowning. “The blood patterning... ooh.” He clicked his tongue. “It’s an autopsy alright, but it looks like it was done a little premature.”

“What do you mean?” Mike asked from behind him.

He glanced back. “Well- standard operating procedure for most M.E.s is that you wait for the guy to be dead before you cut him open.”

Jo stepped forward. “This autopsy was performed while he was still alive?”

“Yeah. I’m pretty sure that’s what killed him. Small wonder. It looks like the killer used a rudimentary drainage system to catch the blood...” he trailed off, his eyes tracing over the exposed organs, and he found himself frowning.

“What is it?”

He couldn’t really be sure.

There wasn’t any one thing, more like multitudes of tiny ones: specific knife marks, the gentle set-asides of skin and precise slices. The body had felt familiar as soon as he’d approached it, but he’d chalked it up to seeing an autopsied body where he wasn’t expecting it. But this wasn’t just an autopsied body, was it? He’d seen plenty of them from plenty of different M.E.s in his career. They all had subtly different motions, different patterns, different workflows. This body was...  _ too _ familiar.

His mouth went dry.

“Lucas?” Jo asked. “You okay?”

“It’s... it’s... creepy.”

Mike scoffed. “You work with cut-open dead bodies all the time.”

“No, that’s not it. It’s... the way that the autopsy was performed. I mean, the flourishes and the scalpel marks.” He turned to face them. “Look... every M.E. is a painter, right? And they have brushstrokes, and...”

“Yeah?”

Lucas turned to face the body again, but he couldn’t unsee it. A pang of fear wiggled through him.

“Well.” He forced himself to say it. “These are Henry’s.”

Jo and Mike exchanged a glance.

“You’re sure?” Jo asked.

He swallowed. “Sure as I can be right now. When the body gets back to the morgue I can be a little more thorough, but... I- yeah, I recognize the style.”

Jo pressed her lips together and walked out. Mike followed right behind.

Lucas turned back to stare at the body. He wouldn’t let himself believe it. Henry wasn’t capable of doing this, he just wasn’t. But the body laid here, bare to all, telling Lucas outright that he must have.

Look at that. Finally got the dead to talk to him, and he didn’t want to hear what they had to say.

What was up with today, anyway? Did it hate him? First someone managed to drown in a taxi without leaving behind a body, now Henry, _ Dr. Morgan, _ supposedly murdered some guy off the street?

Maybe this was why Henry never took days off. When he did, the whole world took a nosedive straight to Backwards Land.


	3. Abe's Antiques

Jo stared at the warrant as the elevator doors closed. Henry hadn’t been at the shop; the sign in the door had been changed from By Appointment Only to Closed, and the place had been locked.

She’d had to get a warrant, and it’d been easy. She’d had to get a warrant to get into her partner’s home.

She was going to have to break in to Abe’s Antiques.

The elevator opened again and she stepped out into the morgue, even got a few steps in before she stopped. She’d meant to go to ground level, not the morgue. Habit.

“Detective Martinez!” said Lucas, grabbing her attention. He hastily re-covered Smight’s body and ran over toward her, ending at a half-jog. “Detective Martinez, you’re going to Henry’s place, right?”

“Did you find something?” she asked, hopeful.

“No- oh! Wait! Yes, one thing. Well, two things. First, you’d probably like to know that we put the time of death at 10 PM last night, which isn’t exactly helpful. But I thought it was interesting that Richard over there was also recently vaccinated for Hep B.”

Her eyebrows went up. “That’s something, it’s a connection between the two victims. You think they might have known each other?”

“Both worked at hospitals, or both dated the same girl?” He shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

She nodded. “I’ll tell Hanson. Anything else? Anything about the killer, or any signs of a struggle?”

His mouth twisted. “Well, no. Um. Nothing. This- this was too well-done, like by someone who knew what I would be looking for.” His eyes flashed in alarm after he said that, and his hands went up defensively. “I don’t mean- I was just wondering- look, can I come with you?”

She blinked. “What? To Henry’s place?”

“Yes. Please. Look, I know what this looks like, alright? I know more than anyone. And- and people who aren’t you and me, they’ll look at Henry and go, pssh, we should’ve seen this coming. Creepy English guy in the morgue? They won’t give it a second thought. But if I-”

“You don’t think he did it.”

“Of course he didn’t do it! You know that, right? You know him as well as I do.”

Jo glanced off to the side, looking through the clear class doors to the wooden walls of Henry’s office. “I don’t think anyone knows him,” she heard herself say.

Lucas froze. “Wait. You don’t- you don’t think he actually did it, do you?”

She pursed her lips and met his eyes again. “No. I don’t think he did. I don’t know much about him, but I know he’s not a killer.”

Lucas let out a breath.

She nodded toward the elevator. “Let’s see what we can find.”

“Yes! Let me just put this body away.”

#

Jo knocked on the glass of the door. Lucas shifted on his feet behind her, glancing around the narrow street.

“Shouldn’t we have brought Detective Hanson?” he asked.

“He’s looking into the hospital connection. The two victims each spent some time working at Bellevue, so he’s heading there.”

“Then we should be there, too, right?”

She knocked again, shaking her head. “If we don’t do this, someone else will.”

“Right.”

She let out a breath. “Okay.”

With that, she kicked the door open.

“Whoa!” Lucas jumped back as Jo drew her weapon and made her way in. He scrambled to his senses and stood in the doorway. “Hey, is that necessary?”

Jo shushed him. “Stay there.”

He put up his hands and stayed there, a single, awkward police-adjacent with a shoulder bag standing next to a broken-in door, trying to pretend he had any business being there whatsoever. He shifted awkwardly from foot to foot, glancing around, looking for anyone who looked like they thought he was doing something illegal. But he wasn’t. He literally had a warrant.

“Okay,” called Jo’s voice. “The place is clear.”

He leapt into the shop and shut the door behind him. Jo holstered her weapon, looking troubled.

“You’re not going to like this.” She motioned to the back. “Come on.”

“Okay.”

She led him back into the apartment behind the shop, then up the stairs. Everything looked pretty normal: a clean house with an antique shop at the front. He’d never been here himself, but had heard about the place from the officers who’d searched it the last time Henry was a murder suspect.

Seemed like the kind of thing that shouldn’t happen more than once.

Jo gestured into a room, and Lucas peered in. It was a small bedroom, one well-made bed and shelves of decorative memorabilia, the walls paneled with dark wood. One wall featured a beautiful oil painting, some woman in a white dress picking flowers. Looked like an original, whatever it was. 

“Is this Henry’s room?” he asked.

“Look in the closet.”

He pulled open a likely door and found a closet with a few suits inside. That’s all: a couple spare shirts and jackets scattered around a hole in the middle. Like someone had grabbed a bunch of hangars and taken them all out at once.

He turned to the rest of the room, and all the other little things jumped out at him. The shelves were decorated unevenly, with dust circles and squares outlining missing pieces. Several of them were shaped like narrow rectangles. Picture frames. He found a dresser built-in to the wall and opened one of the drawers to find it over half empty.

“He skipped town?” Lucas breathed.

“Maybe. Let’s keep looking.”

A thorough search of the apartment revealed similar things missing: one of the pans, a couple blankets, and half of what must have been Abe’s closet. Both of them had left, and they’d known exactly what to take with them.

It was tough to imagine Henry rushing around to pack a suitcase, sleeping on a late-night train or plane, striking off, skipping town. He was too... he was too  _ good _ for that kind of thing. He was too brilliant to have any experience at the life of crime and secrecy that all this had to imply, that he and Abe could pack and run at the drop of a hat. That they knew exactly how to pull it off.

“They’ve done this before,” Lucas said hollowly.

How well did he actually know Dr. Morgan?

Jo turned the corner. “I was thinking the same thing. Let’s go downstairs.”

“Downstairs?”

Lucas followed her into the shop, where she swept aside a rug to reveal a trapdoor.

Despite everything, Lucas laughed in dazed surprise as she swung it open. It was a welcome distraction. “Wow! Absolutely incredible. I should’ve guessed Dr. Morgan would have a secret lair.”

Oddly, the basement seemed to have been picked more thoroughly clean than upstairs. The tables were sparse with various medical tools, one wall sported a huge blackboard that’d been erased but not washed, leaving behind remnants of lines, like a chart or list. There were several bookshelves, most of them full, but a couple starkly empty.

“Wonder which books those were,” he muttered, glancing over the titles of the remaining ones. Medical textbooks, most of them, maybe all of them. Out-of-date, though. Collector’s items.

He pulled away from the books and opened a cabinet on the wall by Jo. This one hadn’t been emptied: it was a collection of glass jars, each labeled by hand. Lucas whistled, raising his eyebrows.

“What is it?” Jo turned around from her inspection of what looked like an older chemistry set.

“All kinds of just... stuff. Sodium azide...” He pulled out one glass jar full of yellow powder. “Look, he’s got sulfur.” He placed it back on the shelf and dug through the jars again. “I mean, there’s regular stuff, too, baking soda, formaldehyde, vinegar, ethanol... is that acetonitrile? Looks like there’s a jar of metalloid arsenic in the back. Wow. Between this and that,” he pointed to the chemistry set Jo had been inspecting, “Henry could’ve done almost all the same chemical tests as the lab guys do, if he wanted to.”

“Why would he?”

Lucas shrugged. “Lots of scientists have their own experiments going on at home. Can’t turn the ol’ brain off, that kind of thing. Don’t tell me you’re surprised Henry has lab stuff.”

“I’m not.” She frowned. “But what does he need with arsenic?”

“Hey, arsenic has plenty of uses. You should really be concerned about the acetonitrile.” He closed the cabinet and paced toward the middle of the room, glancing around. “That stuff’s cyanide in disguise. And sodium azide can really sneak up on you.”

“So, Henry has a cabinet full of poison.”

“What, you’re telling me you don’t have a tub of bleach at home?” He grinned, and his eye caught on something behind her. “All chemicals have a bunch of... applications...”

He walked around her and ducked beneath the chemistry set, reaching under the table.

“Okay,” said Jo, “you’ve been spending way too much time around Henry.”

“It’s a book.” He stood, showing her the red unmarked cover. “Clean. It looks like it might have fallen out of a suitcase while they were packing.”

“What makes you think that?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know, it was on the floor.”

He paged through it, showing her. His eyebrows went up when he recognised the handwriting. “Oooh. Personal journal of Dr. Henry Morgan, huh?” He grinned at Jo. “What kind of juice do you think we’ll find?”

She met his gaze with a raised eyebrow, and pointed to the page. “Look. 1889. This isn’t Henry’s journal.”

“Huh.” He frowned. “The handwriting is eerily similar.”

“Yeah,” she said distractedly, then paced away.

Lucas glanced over the book a little longer before closing it and turning toward her. “So...”

Jo nodded. “They ran off. Packed up the necessities and left.”

“But why?” he asked, frustrated. “If Henry didn’t do it...”

She turned to face him, her arms crossed.

Lucas reached out toward her. “No. Look. There are more missing pieces to this than just him, right? Like the drowning victim.”

“Lucas-”

“I know, I get it. The doors were locked, the body couldn’t have magically disappeared. But there has to be a third option. If someone’s waving a gun at you, you don’t start scratching at the ceiling of a car, you just don’t. What happened to the gun, anyway? Why was it fired from the passenger seat if it was fired after the cab was already stolen? Why was the owner of the gun found so far away from the cab--do we actually even know if that was Richard’s gun? Why are you smiling?”

It was a sweet smile, her arms held in front of her. “You’re a good kid, Lucas.”

“Common misconception, actually. I’m twenty-eight. It’s the limbs.” He waved one arm as an example. “See? Looks like I haven’t grown into them yet, but the truth is I’m not going to.”

She chuckled and paced away again. “The thing is...” She stopped, looked around herself. “Coming here and seeing all this... I still don’t think he did it.”

The tension melted from Lucas’s shoulders.

“Everything’s pointing to him. Everything that we have, anyway. But I just can’t... I can’t go there. I’ve seen him try to sacrifice himself to save innocent people. He’s almost too enthusiastic about it.” She frowned, and shook her head. “He cares way too much.”

“So,” Lucas said, reaching toward her. “So, someone’s framing him. Yeah?”

“Maybe.”

“What do you mean, maybe? It looks like he had to have done it, but he didn’t do it. Boom. Framing.” He clapped one hand into the other for emphasis. “All we have to do is figure out who. And why. And how.”

Her eyes narrowed. “We need to figure out who’s had access to the bodies Henry’s worked on. That’s the only way they could have copied his...” she gestured to Lucas. “Brushstrokes.”

“Yes! Ooh, I can do that. I can track that down for you.”

“We need to find both murder weapons. And we still need to work out what happened in that cab. I’ve never seen a crime scene like that before. We still don’t have a real timeline.”

Her phone rang then, and she answered. Lucas opened the red book again, inspecting the non-Henry handwriting. He considered for a second that it  _ was _ Henry’s handwriting, like he was writing in code or putting together some epistolary creative project, but the pages were worn and delicate enough for the book to actually be 130 years old.

Lucas blinked, his eyes focusing on the words.

_ The face was gashed in all directions, the nose, cheeks, eyebrows and ears being partly removed. The lips were blanched & cut by several incisions running obliquely down to the chin. There were also numerous cuts extending irregularly across all the features. _

He’d read this before. Not these exact words, but this exact murder. Was this--did Henry actually own the personal notes for the Mary Kelly murder? Written in original hand by the on-scene doctor?

Lucas hurriedly set the book down on the nearest table. He was lucky at least that he was wearing gloves; he couldn’t imagine damaging such a priceless relic with the oil from his measly fingers. He dug in his case for an evidence bag so that he could carry it more safely.

Henry wouldn’t mind. Surely, he wouldn’t want something like this lying on the basement floor, where anyone could just  _ step _ on it.

Jo hung up. “Hanson said- what are you doing?”

He looked up. “Well, did you tell him?”

“No, what are you doing?” She gestured to the half-closed evidence bag with the red book inside. He looked at it, then shrugged, smiling sheepishly.

“You never know,” he said, and sealed the bag.

Jo shook her head. “Anyway, Hanson said both of the victims have had altercations with the same patient at Bellevue. They have nothing else in common.”

“Hey- that’s great!” He carefully slipped the book into his shoulder bag, and turned to Jo. “That’s great! Right? Get the name of that patient, maybe that’s who’s framing Henry?”

“That’s what I was thinking, but we’ll have to wait for a warrant to get access to the patient files to find out the name. It’ll be a couple days.”

Lucas let out a long breath, studying the room around him. “That’s a long time for Henry to be running. We’ll never be able to track him down after we clear his name.”

Jo nodded thoughtfully. “Hold on. Have you spoken to Henry at all today?”

“No, not since he called out this morning.”

“Okay. So sometime after I asked him about his watch, but before we found Richard Smight, he and Abe skipped town.”

“Right, that’s what I’m seeing.”

“Which means he knew this was going to happen.”

Lucas opened his mouth, but didn’t have a response to that.

“He knew he was going to be framed for murder. I bet he called out today so he could have time to pack and run. Huh.” She clicked one heel. “I bet he was in the middle of packing when Hanson and I showed up. That means something happened last night.” Her smile was eerie, given the subject matter. “I knew he was covering something up. I thought he might know the cab driver. Henry was explicitly threatened last night, by someone he’s familiar with, and he figured the safest option would be to split town as soon as possible.”

“He... knows the killer?”

“Not like that,” she said quickly, glancing up at him. “I think Henry’s been threatened like this before. I think it’s someone who’s chased him down from England or Guam.” She shook her head. “You know, this is exactly the kind of thing he would lie about. He’s in trouble, and he won’t ask me for help because he’s worried about putting me in danger. It all makes sense! Damn it, Henry.”

She ran a hand through her hair and set off pacing again. Lucas thought about it. She was right, it did make sense. He’d long been familiar with Henry’s brand of secrecy; the man didn’t open up about anything, not even the little things that didn’t matter. Lucas had never personally seen the heroic acts that Jo had described, but after watching Henry’s genuine excitement over their little  _ ah-ha _ moments in the lab, he found he didn’t doubt it.

Jo stopped. “We should track him down.”

“What, and bring him in? Probably everyone outside this room thinks he did it. I don’t see that turning out well.”

“No. We track him down and get into contact. Then,” she looked meaningfully at Lucas, “We get him to talk to us about what’s happening, and we let him know when it’s safe to come back.”

He raised his eyebrows, crossing his arms. “Are you talking about abetting a fugitive? You, Detective Jo Martinez?”

“Is my name supposed to mean something important?”

“No, I just-”

“You’re the one who illegally biopsied a liver at a mortuary.”

Lucas ducked his head. “Okay, you got me there. But in my defense, that’s a much lighter sentence.”

She nodded. “You’re right. You shouldn’t help me.”

“I- what?”

“All I ask is that you keep quiet.”

“No- I want to help. I do. Tell me how and I’ll do it, I’m there.”

Jo raised her eyebrow. “All this for your boss?”

“All this for an innocent man, Jo. An innocent man who’s...” He half-shrugged. “Maybe the most brilliant person I’ve ever met?”

“Yeah.” She put a hand on her head for a moment, then led the way upstairs. “Come on. There’s a lot of work to do.”


	4. Lucas, Investigator

Jo and Lucas scoured the shop for anything that might indicate where Abe and Henry had decided to go, but they found nothing. Not a forward-to address, not a voicemail change, not a note for some future custodian. It was like they’d intended to abandon the shop and let it foreclose.

“Abe put a lot of work into this shop,” Jo said, leaning against the wall and frowning at the furniture on display. She tapped her finger against her arm where they crossed. “He and Henry’s dad used to run it together. This shop is Abe’s whole life. I don’t think he’d just abandon it.”

“Wait, that’s how they know each other?” Lucas’s voice carried out from the kitchen behind her. “I was wondering.”

“Henry said Abe’s the closest thing to family he has left.”

Lucas appeared in the doorway, hands in his pockets. “Well, then, there you have it.”

“Have what?”

“They’re essentially family, you just said so. That’s why Abe abandoned the shop. Some things are more important.”

He said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world, then wandered off again to give a second pass through the dining room. Jo turned her head to call back to him. “That doesn’t mean he’ll let it run to the ground and get sold off. He must have some plan for keeping it afloat while he’s gone.” She surveyed the furniture again. “Maybe he has a custodian lined up. Maybe he has a bunch of money saved and he’s just going to eat the losses.”

“Or maybe the closest thing he has to a son is in danger and he didn’t plan this far ahead.”

“Yes he did, Lucas. Remember? They knew exactly what they were doing, they’ve cut and run before.”

“Yeah, you’re right about that.” He emerged once again and leaned next to her in the doorway. “I don’t think we’ll find the answers here. Like you said, they knew what they were doing. The place is clean.”

She sighed. Why was Henry Morgan so familiar with running away, that he could do it so well? She thought about his history, or what little she knew of it. He studied medicine in Guam, worked for a while as a physician, then gave that up suddenly to become a gravedigger. He had ‘money saved’, a veiled implication that he was independently wealthy, and worked as an M.E. because he wanted to. He’d probably been a doctor in London, and moved to New York when his father died so he could live with Abe. It sounded like a fairly normal series of events... but it didn’t line up with what they found here. How could he and Abe have cut and run before?

“They must be keeping the shop open somehow,” she said, nodding. “If they’ve done this before, then it makes sense that they would keep this place as a base.”

“Not really,” Lucas frowned. “If they don’t want to be found, then having a place to come home to kind of defeats the purpose.”

“But this store has been in operation longer than Henry’s been a doctor. So if it was just Abe and Henry, then it must have happened sometime during the store’s operation, right? I think they must have run away like this sometime after Henry’s father died.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Which means they have something in place to keep the store open. We need to check bank records, phone records, and maybe keep an eye on this place to see if-”

“Wait, Jo, how can we check bank and phone records if we don’t want anyone else to find out where he is? Doesn’t that stuff get logged at the precinct?”

“Damn.” She shook her head. “Alright. I’ll take you back to the morgue, so you can finish up your work and start making that list of people who would be able to get access to Henry’s bodies. As soon as I can, I’ll come back here and stake out the place myself. It’ll give me time to come up with more ideas.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

#

Lucas found it hard to concentrate.

The official work he had to do was pretty routine: mostly clerical stuff, making sure everything was logged properly. Once he was done with Richard’s body, he gave the report to Dr. Washington for his sign-off--which, again, he gave without making any changes, _ score _ \--and settled in at his little workstation to tie up loose ends and work on Jo’s project.

What he kept thinking about instead was Jo’s insistence that Henry had been threatened last night. Threatened; that’s one way to describe those scratch marks in the taxi.

He hated that image in his head of Henry, drowning, scratching desperately for a way out. Especially because it wasn’t possible; no one could have drowned in that taxi, not with no way out like that, and no body. Both he and Jo had heard from Henry; he was fine, more or less. Alive, anyway. But to Lucas, the scratches  _ meant _ drowning, and the pocket watch _ meant _ Henry; so he kept seeing it, every time he let his mind wander.

Damn it. Crime scenes without bodies were the worst.

He pulled the red book out of his shoulder bag, looking for a distraction, but realized his workstation was covered in papers and files. He needed a clean, flat place, preferably where no one would sneak up on him. So, he grabbed some gloves and went into Henry’s office.

As he’d thought, Henry’s desk was clean. But still he hesitated to sit in the chair; he’d never sat in it before, and it’d probably be weird. Particularly now with Henry gone, wherever he was.

Trapped, frantic, in the backseat of a cab.

Lucas cleared his throat and forced himself to take the seat, then he removed the red book from the evidence bag and carefully turned the pages, laying it out on the desk.

It was a journal, with no author name listed; only dates. They started at “2 6 1886”, and ended “28 12 1891”. Five years of entries written by hand by a doctor who’d consulted on Jack the Ripper. Incredible.

He read the pages carefully, here-and-there. Each entry was nothing but a date and a description of a death, sometimes not even a victim name and rarely with any context. One entry said nothing more than “ _ 22 10 1886 - trampled by horse.” _ There was no analysis into it like there was with some of the others, no name, no description of the wounds or angle of the body. That was it: trampled by horse. Poor guy, whoever it was.

Lucas flipped to November 1888 and eagerly read the Mary Kelly notes. They were in the same shorthand as the other entries, clipped sentences and technical terms, like it was another death for the pile. The only real difference between Mary Kelly’s entry and the other ones was the length; the wounds had been numerous and diverse enough to warrant independent description, and it took up more room in the journal than probably any other entry.

When he finished reading it, Lucas leaned back in the seat and let out a breath. What a thing to let fall to the floor in your haste to pack. Then again, Henry probably owned so many priceless artifacts that one less wouldn’t be noticed. He seemed like that kind of guy.

Lucas’s eyes caught on a photo of a woman he hadn’t noticed before. It was a black-and-white picture, and she was beautiful, grinning at the camera while her skirt twirled around her. Henry had never mentioned a woman like that before, not someone that he might put up a picture of. Then again, Henry had never mentioned much of anything.

Out of curiosity, Lucas opened Henry’s file drawer and pulled out the first report he could find. He opened it to a page with a lengthy notes section, then opened the red book somewhere in the middle to compare. They really were startlingly similar.

He frowned, leaning closer.

They were... creepily similar. Kind of like how Richard’s autopsy had been creepily familiar. But this journal couldn’t be copying Henry; the thing was over a hundred years old. Had Henry copied the journal? Maybe. But why?

Lucas picked up the report page and folded it carefully so that one line of written text followed the edge of the fold. Then he laid it flat out against the book, lining them up so that they each displayed the same exact word right above one another:  _ death. _

He let the book fall closed in his haste to reach into his pocket. He still had the swab kit with him that he’d brought to the taxi; it fit in his pocket and he’d never taken it out. He hastily retrieved the little magnifying glass, reopened the book, lined up the words again, and leaned in. Studying the shapes of the letters, the blotching of the ink.

They weren’t photocopies of one another, of course. But the shapes of each letter were almost precisely the same, even the sweep of the T.

Lucas knew how important it was not to presume to know someone else’s job. He only had a hobbyist’s knowledge of handwriting analysis, the sort that bordered on palm-reading. He knew he should get a second opinion. But he didn’t want to show this to anyone; he didn’t want anyone to think he might be trying to look for Henry outside of his job with the city.

What would it... mean, exactly? If he took it to someone and they said the two papers were definitely written by the same person? The easy answer would be that Henry had taught himself to copy the penmanship in the journal. It was... possible. Could any copy really be that perfect? Or had Henry written this book himself, copying case notes from other sources?

Yes. That had to be it. Lucas decided he had to take the journal in to a specialist to get it appraised. They would tell him that it really wasn’t 130 years old, that someone had faked the aging with a special chemical process. That would make sense, and he thought Henry would have the skill to do it.

A specialist. Of all things, he needed a paper specialist. Of  _ course _ he did. It just figures that this insane day would be able to carve out one final way to slap him in the face.

#

Jo leapt at the sound of a knock at her passenger window. Lucas, holding up two cups of coffee. She unlocked the car, and Lucas let himself in.

“Thought I’d find you here,” he said. “Coffee?”

“No thanks. I’m going to head home pretty soon.”

“It’s decaf.”

She raised an eyebrow at him and accepted the cup. She turned to fix her gaze, as it’d been for hours now, on the dark exterior of Abe’s Antiques.

“Why aren’t you at home?” she asked him.

“I finished putting that list together.” He held up a thick packet; it was an even longer list than Mike’s collection of gun owners. “I was going to keep some groups of people under one heading, but then decided I might as well track down all their names.”

“So many people have access to the bodies when you’re done with them?”

Lucas wiggled the packet. “Yes and no. You can’t exactly wander in off the street. But there’s a bunch of people authorized to take them to transit to the mortuaries, then there’s all the employees at all the mortuaries. And there’s the people at the student hospital who get our donors. I wasn’t able to get _ all _ the students’ names on here, but I managed to get a list of the ones in the classes that work with the bodies that get donated, as well as the teachers and janitorial staff.”

Jo blinked. “Wow. You did all that?”

He flipped through the pages. “Yeah, well, there’s not much else I can do, and I needed to do something. Honestly, the hardest part was tracking down an industrial stapler that would cut through the whole stack. You wouldn’t believe the amount of storage closets I’ve been in today.” He let the stack drop onto his lap. “Anyway. It’s way too many names.”

“It’s a start. Chances are, someone on that list killed Richard Smight.”

“And... then what? Took his gun to shoot one window out of a stolen cab?”

“I’ve been thinking about that,” Jo said as her attention landed on the storefront again. “The gun did practically nothing in the cab. No one was injured by it, the bullet wasn’t even found, but it was a very unique gun. I think it might have been fired in the cab by the killer for the explicit purpose of linking the cab to Smight’s body.”

“But if that was his goal, why not just kill Raj that way? We still know nothing about the sword or where it could have come from. Seems kind of unnecessary to have both of them, when all he needed was the gun.”

“Unless there’s something about the sword, too,” she mused.

“Now, when it comes to that, I wouldn’t even know where to start looking. The katana is one of the most popular types of swords, you can get them anywhere. The best bet would be to find the actual murder weapon and go backwards from that to see where it came from, but trust me, it’s much harder to go through all that for a sword than a gun.”

She glanced at him. “Done this before?”

He laughed nervously. “Not exactly. A friend of mine who does cosplay wanted me to track down a specific sword she saw for sale online once. Took forever, I never got very far with it, and at least that time I knew what it looked like.”

“Well, my other theory is that the killer drove the cab into the river himself.”

“Huh. Dangerous doesn’t begin to describe that.”

“If he had the gun, he could have kept the doors locked, shot the driver’s window open, and climbed out while the taxi sank. That explains the shattered window and the missing weapon.”

“Yeah. You’re right.”

He frowned, like he had something he wanted to add on to that. Jo sighed and watched the store again.

“This is about your missing drowning victim, isn’t it?”

“What? Well, yes, alright? Firing the gun in the car... I don’t think you could trust the casing not to float away when the car fills with water. It’d be much more damning to just wear gloves and leave the gun, right? And why dump the car at all when there’s no guarantee the police will even find it? Driving the car into the river, shooting out the driver’s window, and swimming away... I mean, it makes more sense if he had someone in the back seat he didn’t like.”

Jo nodded. “It does. But things don’t always make perfect sense, Lucas. That’s one of the first things you learn on this job: no one behaves predictably.”

A sour taste settled in her mouth, watching Abe’s Antiques. No, no one behaved predictably.

#

No one approached the storefront as long as Jo watched it that night. She would have liked to stay later, but she hadn’t told anyone she was going on stakeout, and would be expected at work bright and early. So, she drove Lucas home--no point in forcing him to take the subway at this time of night--and headed home herself, determined to at least try to get some sleep.

Henry didn’t trust her.

She’d been pushing away the thought all day, but it came leaping back as she stared at her ceiling. Sure, he had his secrets; he was a private person. She didn’t begrudge him that. But this was different. She was a police officer, and he’d been threatened. He should have felt safe enough to talk to her about it, but he didn’t trust her. He pushed her away as though she were a child, as though she had no training, connections, or authority.

Her thoughts took a weird turn, then: she’d assumed that he had elected not to ask for her help. But what if the thought hadn’t even occurred to him?

He was a lonely guy; that was obvious enough if you knew how to look. It seemed like he’d been persistently lonely up until recently, when he’d decided to join them for drinks for the first time. If he’d been threatened like this before--if this was an old enemy of his, tracking him down from England or Guam--he might have fallen back on those instincts. He might not even have realized he had friends here who could help.

“Damn it, Henry."


	5. The Museum

Lucas didn’t want to bet on having a free lunch, not with his and Jo’s secret side-project, so he got up early and headed out to the museum. Better to get this over with so it wouldn’t keep bothering him. It was a non-question, anyway, barely worth the time. He shouldn’t even be spending this much energy on it.

He never needed to call this place anything other than ‘the museum’. It was the first, sometimes the only, one that came to mind when anyone used the phrase. Sometimes he might relegate it to ‘ _that_ museum’, but further specificity was never required. He’d spent nearly every day here for two years.

He climbed up the white steps toward a slowly-pacing security guard, who stopped when he realized Lucas was beelining for him. He sighed, and was already speaking by the time Lucas reached him.

“Museum’s not open yet,” he said.

“No, I need to speak with someone. Belle. Anabelle Krasinski? She should be inside.”

“This is the Met, kid. Could you be a little more specific?”

“That’s a common misconception, actually.” He tried for a chuckle. “I’m twenty-eight.”

The guard’s dry look implied that any further attempts at humor would only make things worse. Lucas swallowed.

“Yeah. Um. She works in restoration. Conservation,” he corrected himself. “She likes to start early, so she should be here already.”

“Your name?”

“Lucas. Lucas Wahl.”

The guard shook his head, like he couldn’t believe he was playing telephone with some early riser. “Stay out here. If Ms. Krasinski is here, we’ll have her come out front.”

“Sure. Thanks.”

He nodded, then paced away again, muttering into his radio. Lucas cleared his throat, turned and settled in to one of the top steps: the corner, facing the fountain. It was where he and Belle had used to sit on her lunch break; he’d bring the hot dogs or gyros, and she’d bring sodas from the vending machine in the break room, and they’d barely get a chance to eat for all their talking.

Took them too long to realize they’d spent the whole time talking about completely different things.

Should he have come here? Was it worth getting back into all this, just for the obvious answer to a stupid question? He should take off. He should leave, get to work early.

But then Belle would know he’d come here and chickened out. He’d already given them his name.

“Lucas?”

He stood and whirled around. Belle looked exactly the same as she had three years ago, except that she’d grown out her hair. It was still vibrant blue, but long now and frizzy at the edges, and tied back in a ponytail. She had an understandably quizzical look on her face and wore a hefty canvas apron.

“Oh,” he said. “Did I interrupt your work? Sorry.”

“Been a while.”

“Yeah.”

They stood there watching one another. Lucas tensed his hands around the strap of his shoulder bag. He hadn’t forgotten how pretty she was, but he’d found himself hoping he’d been mistaken.

Belle spread out one hand. “Can I help you?”

“Oh! Um, actually, I’m here with a question. You do paper, right?”

She crossed her arms, furrowed her eyebrows. “You’re here for work?”

“Yeah.” He dug through his bag and pulled out the evidence bag with the red book inside. “I was hoping you could give me a rough guess about whether this is actually old, or distressed on purpose by someone. I don’t need, like, carbon dating or anything, I just thought you might be able to let me know how someone might have artificially aged it.”

Belle accepted the evidence bag, her mouth open in surprise.

“Oh, wait,” said Lucas, and dug through his bag for nitrile gloves. He pulled two of them out and offered them to her.

She accepted them, blinking, then shook her head. “Wow. Alright. Hold on.” With that, she settled in to the top step beside where Lucas had been sitting, put the book on her lap, and pulled on the gloves.

Lucas sat beside her. “Yeah. Sorry to spring this on you.”

“You could have called ahead. You could’ve done actually anything other than give me a heart attack at work.”

“I scared you?”

“Yeah, I was worried you wanted to start back up again.”

“Oh.” He twisted his hands together as she pulled out the book, trying not to look insulted. She had her reasons for feeling that way, but still. It wasn’t exactly what a guy liked to hear.

She froze, then put her hand on Lucas’s arm, leaning toward him. “Oh, my God. I’m engaged.”

“What?”

“I’m sorry, I forgot you didn’t know that. I’m engaged. That’s why I was-”

“Oh!” Lucas deflated, laughed a little. “Oh alright, that makes- hey, congratulations.”

“Yeah. I mean, thanks. Thank you.”

They lapsed into an awkward silence while she flipped carefully through the book, inspecting the pages.

“What is this?” she said eventually, laughter in her voice. “A list of deaths from the late 1800s? I should’ve expected it from you.”

He coughed. “Well, yeah, but I think it was written pretty recently. I don’t doubt the info’s right, though. Maybe it was compiled from different sources.”

She glanced over at him. “Do you have a magnifying glass? I didn’t bring anything with me.”

“Wait--yeah, I do.” He fished it out and handed it over. That little thing was really coming in handy.

She inspected the paper itself, the binding between the pages, the spine, even the cover. She disappeared into her work, _hmm_ -ing occasionally, crouching over her own lap like she were an oyster trying to hide a pearl. 

She resurfaced for a moment. “Do you have a light?” 

“Um, I have the flashlight on my phone.”

“That works.”

He fumbled the setting on, then handed the phone over. She shone it through one of the pages, then turned the book and cast the light down through the spine.

Lucas cleared his throat. He’d had breakfast less than an hour ago, but he suddenly couldn’t stop thinking about hot dogs and cold soda.

“Okay.” Belle sat up again. “There are a couple ways you can age a book like this, if you know what you’re doing. It’s not as simple as soaking it in tea and throwing it in the oven, not if you want to do it right. You’d have to use a certain kind of acid, and you’d have to be very careful not to destroy the book in the process. It’d be tough to pull off, but not impossible. Even then, though, there are a couple telltale signs of a new book that can’t be shaken so easily. The glue used, the method of binding and stitching. Things like that.”

He let out a breath. Good. Good, that’s all he needed.

“Anyway. This is real.” She tucked the book back into the bag.

Lucas jumped. “What?”

“I didn’t find any signs of artificial acid damage on the pages or the binding. The signature stitching is, as far as I can tell, consistent with something that would’ve been produced around the late 1800s, and the pattern of the aging is indicative of a book that’s spent more time in a box than being read. It hasn’t been opened at all, at least not until very recently. Like, a year, max. This book hasn’t been aged by anything other than time.” She handed it back to him.

He accepted it, opening and closing his mouth. “I- I don’t understand. Maybe you could have missed something? I’m sure this was written sometime within the last twenty years. Maybe the _book_ is old, but it was written in recently?”

Belle stood, and Lucas scrambled to his feet after her.

“Nope. Anything written under fifty years ago would have caused visible damage, and as I said, I don’t think it’s even been opened. You asked for my professional opinion,” she added with a shrug. “As someone who works with paper regularly, it’s my opinion that your book there is at least 128 years old. Notes and all. Be careful with it.”

“I...” He looked it over again, then back up at her.

“It was... nice to see you, Lucas,” she said. “But please call ahead next time.”

He cleared his throat. “Yeah. I will. Thanks, Belle. Really, thank you. This helps a lot.”

She smiled at him, then turned and disappeared back into the museum.

Belle was engaged. Huh. A lot could happen in three years.

He shook himself out of it and retreated down the steps, staring at the book. So, Henry had copied the handwriting. Right? It was the only option left. He’d gotten his hands on an original case journal from the late 1800s, and little medical-student Henry Morgan had dedicated his off-hours to copying the penmanship. It sounded weird, but weirder had happened.

Except Belle said the book hadn’t been opened at all until this year. Henry would have had to spend months studying it, wouldn’t he?

Lucas couldn’t help thinking of the drowning victim in the cab. This was the same sort of thing; all the clues pointed at a brick wall. He let out a scowl and slipped the book back into his shoulder bag.

#

_You know what? Let’s think these through._ Lucas leaned forward on the subway, elbows on his knees, focused hard enough on his thoughts that he didn’t see the people in front of him. _Let’s think them through,_ because all this Backwards Land stuff apparently wanted him to, and the sooner he got the ridiculous ideas out of his head the sooner he could actually be helpful.

The scratches felt to him like drowning. So, the killer trapped someone in the back of the cab, drove into the water, shot out the driver’s side window with Smight’s gun, and escaped. The person in the back drowned, and then like, disappeared or something. Maybe they were eaten by microbial piranhas. In Backwards Land, anything was possible.

Alright, so let’s say microbial piranhas. That meant the killer _meant_ to kill the person in the backseat, but didn’t mean for anyone to find out about it. At the same time, the killer did mean for them to find the gun, or at least the casing, so they could link Henry to Smight. But how had they planned on linking Henry there? The pocket watch. They’d taken the pocket watch off of Henry and tossed it in the back seat. Wouldn’t it have been better to put it in the front seat, though? With the gun?

Wait, there was also the chance that the killer didn’t know about the piranhas. Maybe they’d meant for the police to fish that body out of the water along with the cab, led to by the murder of Raj Patel, and linked to the murder of Richard Smight. It would be a nice chain of events to have a dead body in the cab, too, wouldn’t it? So, who would _that_ be, and how would the killer have planned to pin that one on Henry?

Maybe it was just some random person who’d owned the katana. Maybe someone else at Bellevue. It wasn’t anyone at the precinct, because everyone there was accounted for. It wasn’t Abe, because Jo said she talked to him yesterday. What about the woman in the picture on Henry’s desk? Could be, if Lucas could figure out who it was.

Now the other problem: the notes in the red casebook were 128 years old, verified by bonafide-genius and somehow-already-engaged conservator Anabelle Krasinski. It was also, by Lucas’s own eye, written by Henry Morgan. Backwards Land solution: Henry Morgan was 128 years old. Well, older, because he’d have needed time to learn how to write and how to practice medicine. Let’s round it up to 150.

Lucas chuckled. That felt less ridiculous than the piranhas; if anyone he knew were to be secretly 150 years old, he’d bet on Henry, hands-down.

So, Henry and his anti-aging cream had been around for 150 years. That’s a lot more time to have made all kinds of crazy enemies; probably a lot of people out for his secret formula. But, if all they wanted was the secret to staying 35 forever, framing him for murder seemed like it’d be a bit over-the-top, didn’t it? Especially the way they did it, which took all that preparation and practice. Easier to kill him and sack his place for magic potions. Maybe they couldn’t kill him for some reason.

That image came back to Lucas again, the one he hated: Henry scrabbling at the inside of the sinking cab, gasping for breath. Lucas grimaced and tried to shake the image away.

His eyes snapped open, making the woman across from him jump in her seat.

What if they _had_ tried to kill Henry, and frame him for murder at the same time? What if Henry was 150 years old not because he’d developed some uber anti-aging cream, but because he’d developed some immortality drug, Dr. Jekyll style? What if _Henry_ had been the one in the back of the cab, and there wasn’t a body because Henry couldn’t die?

Lucas groaned and leaned back in his seat. He was supposed to be _ruling out_ these crazy ideas, but instead he’d gone and made them worse. First a disappearing drowning victim, then microbial piranhas, now Henry was immortal. He really wasn’t cut out for this. Maybe he should back off and let Jo take care of it after all.


	6. Daydreaming

“I know how hard this will be for some of us to hear,” said Lieutenant Reece, surveying a bullpen of silent officers. “But Dr. Henry Morgan is, at the moment, our lead suspect for both of the murders linked to the stolen taxi. According to the state of his home, he and his roommate, Abraham Morgan, skipped town yesterday. We have a warrant for their arrests. There is a BOLO out on both of them and we’re working closely with the FAA. In the meantime, please remember.” She paused, glancing between those present. “Dr. Morgan is still only a suspect. We have other avenues of inquiry to follow, and we’re following them. This is not the time for wild speculation.”

The room hummed with grumbling, none of it loud or persistent enough to earn the Lieutenant’s ire. Henry was pretty well-known up here by now, but most people still thought of him as that weirdo from the morgue who had sex stuff in his basement. Well, alright; maybe they thought of him as the weirdo from the morgue with sex stuff in his basement who’d been working a lot with Martinez lately.

Maybe that’s why she wasn’t seeing as many friendly glances as usual.

“Abe’s last name is Morgan?” Mike asked, strolling over.

“I guess. Have you heard anything on the Bellevue files?”

“Not yet, but chill out, Jo. It hasn’t even been a day yet.”

“I know.” She leaned back in her seat.

Mike leaned against her desk, holding his coffee. Glancing around, like he had something to say that he didn’t want to.

“You think he did it,” Jo sighed.

He half-shrugged, glanced down at her. He lowered his voice. “You don’t?”

“Hanson, I know the case is pointing toward him, but...” She shook her head. “I know him. He wouldn’t do that to Smight.”

“He does it to people all the time,” Mike answered, but he frowned as he said it.

“You know that’s different.”

“Yeah, but.” He shook his head. “There’s something real creepy about how comfortable he is with death, Jo. I know you know what I’m talking about. And we really don’t know enough about him to make a character claim, you know?”

She thought about the moment a few weeks ago, after the Soul Slasher case, when Henry had told her it was a good thing that she was so affected by Mr. Bentley’s death.

_ ‘The day that killing another person doesn't affect you, that's when you've got real problems.’ _

“No. This isn’t him, Mike.” She met his eyes and smiled. “Anyway. We have other leads. Don’t worry about me, alright?”

“Alright.” He stood from her desk. “If you need anyone to talk to, though.”

“Thank you.”

He raised his coffee to her, then retreated to his own desk.

Jo pulled out the case file. So, they couldn’t make progress on the connection between Smight and Patel until the court order came through, but they had other things to worry about. Like the weird timeline on the cab, the sword... Jo was beyond relieved that the sword hadn’t shown up at Abe’s shop.

She wasn’t the only one to have considered staking out Abe’s Antiques. That meant any leads to come from that avenue were going to have to go through the precinct, but it also meant she didn’t have to sit out there herself.

Her phone rang. She took a steadying breath and answered it. “Martinez.”

_ “Hey, Detective.” _ It was Lucas’s voice, tense and nervous.  _ “I have a few papers I need you to sign, for Richard Smight.” _

A pretty bad lie. She wondered if there were someone in the room with him. “I’ll be right down.”

_ “Thanks, see you.” _

Maybe he had a lead on Henry’s location, somehow. She gathered up the case file and took it with her for good measure.

#

The idea stuck with Lucas on his way into work. Immortality was fun to think about, especially in regards to Henry Morgan, and it was a welcome distraction from the image of him drowning in the back of a taxi.

Henry wasn’t familiar with a lot of movies? Well, he hadn’t really gotten into them. Maybe he’d seen _ Arrival of a Train  _ when it came out and got too scared to try another one.

He didn’t have a cell phone? Never really understood them. Too impersonal, maybe.

Wore suits all the time? Please! Kids these days had no sense of proper attire.

Henry and Lucas were probably within five years of age, definitely within ten, but still he could  _ absolutely _ imagine Henry saying ‘kids these days’.

He found himself chuckling as he walked into the morgue, earning a cascade of strange looks. That’s right: Henry was an official murder suspect, and Lucas was pretty much the closest thing Henry had to a friend at work. Well, in the morgue, anyway. He was going to be watched pretty carefully. Maybe not officially, but at least by the other people down here.

Dr. Washington had his own office and his own staff. It looked like they were going to leave Lucas alone, to do the same thing he’d done yesterday. All the Henry's work without the Henry, and an M.E.’s sign-off at the end of the day. Didn’t they care that he wasn’t a doctor? He didn’t even have an RN license. At least the paperwork was technically within his job description. He settled in and started on that.

What would the paperwork have looked like, 150 years ago? Probably a lot like what was in that book: _ Trampled by horse. _ He could only imagine a modern post-mortem report, completely blank but for those three words. No wonder they never caught the Ripper.

He leaned back, imagining it: Henry, looking exactly the same as he did now, wandering around 1880s London with that little book under his arm. He fit in like that, honestly, his raised chin and proud saunter as he passed by horse-drawn carriages and what have you.

When it looked like there was no one around, Lucas snuck back into Henry’s office. It would probably look bad if he were caught back here, so he brought a report with him, something he could pretend to have just found. He sat in Henry’s chair again--twice in as many days--and studied the decorations.

It was too easy to see them all as artifacts of an unusually long life. All the wooden boxes, a desktop typewriter hidden away on top of one of the cabinets. Well, of course, right? Computers were so new, a guy that’s 150 years old would want a typewriter on hand in the eventuality that the computer crapped out. 

Technically, Henry didn’t even have a computer, so that wasn’t a perfect hypothetical.

The antique map he had framed? Not just an antique! Maybe he’d used it when he circumnavigated the globe, or whatever people did for fun a hundred years ago. The old-fashioned safe on the bookshelf probably had fake IDs and birth records hidden inside. The woman in the black-and-white photograph?

A dame he met in the ‘50s, of course. A flame that had burned hot and fast, and forever will she be the ghost haunting his lips, et cetera. The One That Got Away. Of course, she’d be in her 80s now, so he wouldn’t be able to chase her down again, lest she discover his secret. He could woo her all over again pretending to be his own grandson, like The Graduate in reverse.

Working quickly--feeling like a kid going through his parents’ liquor cabinet--Lucas fished through a few of the drawers, glancing through for any signs of where Henry might have gone. He wasn’t sure what he expected to find; maybe a list of names and places. Wouldn’t that be something?

The bottom drawer of the desk was locked. That’s right, that’s where Henry kept his tools. Lucas took his own set of keys from his pocket and unlocked it so that he could unroll the leather case and daydream a little longer.

Oh, yes. This tool case was definitely a gift from some thankful tanner. Custom-made, because Henry had saved his daughter’s life, or something. The hunting knife, too, with that special wooden handle; it’d probably been the tanner’s family heirloom, and when Henry...

Lucas drew the knife from its pocket, and his smile fell.

#

“I wasn’t sure what to do,” Lucas admitted, after having looked around himself enough times to make anyone suspicious of what they were doing. Jo, again, was going to have to be the calm one.

“Slow down,” she said, offering him the seat at his own workstation. “What is it?”

She watched him swallow, his eyes shifting back to Henry’s office for a moment as he sank into the chair. “Okay. I was looking into... something, and I found Henry’s hunting knife. Well, I mean, it wasn’t hidden, it was in his tool case.” He leaned in closer, lowered his voice. “It has blood on it. It’s a match for Richard Smight.”

Now Jo wished she’d taken the seat.

“Okay-” she started. “Wait. This is good.”

“This is good?” Lucas whispered. “How is this good?”

“We know that whoever did it planted the tools back in his desk. Which means we should have footage of them entering and leaving the precinct.”

“Okay. But how are we going to get that footage?”

She crossed her arms. “We report the knife.”

He leapt to his feet. “What!” He cleared his throat, glancing around, then lowered his voice again. “Are you trying to get him indicted?”

“If we turn the knife in, we can look through the footage of people coming and going from the precinct between the time Henry got in the cab that night, and this morning when you found it. We’ll see that he never came back, and with Mr. Smight’s death at 10 PM two nights ago, he couldn’t possibly have done it. His name will be cleared, and we can all work on finding the right suspect.”

“But- what if he _ did _ come back that night, for some other reason? What if they think he sent someone else to put his tools back?”

“Why would he put his tools back if he was trying not to get caught? This looks like an obvious framing, Reece will see that. It might have been a better framing if he’d come in yesterday, but he didn’t.”

“That’s a lot of ‘would’s and ‘might’s.”

“It’ll be fine, Lucas. We don’t want to step on the toes of this investigation, remember? We want them to do their job and find the real killer. All  _ we _ want to do is find Henry and make sure he’s safe.”

He nodded. “Okay. Yeah. Here.” He pulled out the leather case from his own desk drawer and handed it to her. “I already looked for prints, didn’t find anything.”

“Nothing?”

“Yeah, not even Henry’s.”

“Huh. Thank you, Lucas. This might actually help.”

He let out a long, slow breath, one hand over his forehead. “Good,” he sighed. “Good.”

She frowned, concerned. “Look, Lucas, just get back to work. Don’t worry about this any more, okay? It’s going to work out.”

“No, I- I want to help. I just don’t know what to do. I have no idea how to even start looking for him.”

The doors opened from the fridge room: a body had been brought in, and was being looked over. She smiled.

“Take you out to lunch later,” she said gently. “My treat.”

He closed his mouth, then nodded. “Um. Thanks.”

#

Once she told the Lieutenant about the knife, Jo was given full use of the surveillance room for exactly the reasons she’d given Lucas. This might all work out. They might be able to clear Henry’s name even before the order came through for Bellevue.

She told them where to look: anyone entering or exiting the precinct between 8:15 PM two days ago, and 9 AM this morning. Yes, it was over 24 hours of footage per camera, but if none of them caught a glimpse of Henry, then Lieutenant Reece had agreed that he was no longer the number-one suspect.

It wouldn’t take him off the list, however, especially after he ran away; and either way he was still wanted for questioning.

“I really hope we don’t see him on those tapes,” Hanson said to her when she stopped for a cup of coffee.

“Yeah, me too, Mike.”

He rested his hand on her shoulder for a moment, then headed back to his desk.

#

‘Morbid curiosity’ had a different meaning in the morgue. For most people, it meant exactly what was always done down here; but down here, cutting people open was the regular kind of curiosity. ‘Morbid curiosity’ was Lucas getting a copy of Henry’s APB to read it over, the descriptions and drivers-license pictures of Henry and Abe. Well, Henry’s he recognized as his ID badge photo. He wasn’t sure whether or not Henry knew how to drive.

_ Too fast and dangerous, _ he thought. _ Unintuitive, not at all like riding a horse. _

The thought made him smile, but it was too late. The knife had soured his fun with imagining that Henry was 150 years old, a reminder that real things were at stake.

“Ready to go?” Jo asked. “Sorry it’s late, I got caught up with work.”

He looked up. “Hmm? Oh! Sure. I almost forgot.”

As he scurried around for his things, Jo frowned, leaning over where he’d put the paper back on his desk. “You’re reading the APB? It doesn’t say anything you don’t already know.”

“Hey, that’s not true. I didn’t know what Abe looked like, or that his last name was Morgan.” He tapped on that, and couldn’t help a chuckle.

“It’s funny?”

“No. Um. Well, kind of.” Now the idea was starting to annoy him; all the same, it was better than the drowning thing, so he shouldn’t be too upset. He found his jacket and gestured for her to lead the way.

“Alright, I’ll bite,” she said once they reached the elevator. “Why is it funny?”

The groaning noise that came out of him was not intentional, and she raised an eyebrow.

He shook his head. “It’s... a stupid joke I’ve been thinking about. Not really a joke. Sort of.”

The elevator doors opened, and Jo led him out to her car. “You don’t want to talk about it?”

“Well, it’s not that, exactly. Okay, so we found that book in Henry’s place, right?”

It was an easy story to tell, and it came all the way out of him because Jo didn’t seem to be telling him to stop. He went on an accidental lengthy tangent about his dating history with Belle, which he only caught because she said his name the same exact way that Henry did when Lucas lost the plot of what he was talking about, and he managed to swing back on-track.

By the time he finished the story, they’d arrived at a counter-serve diner, ordered--in between explanations about microbial piranhas--and found a place to sit.

He sighed, leaning back in the plastic chair. “So, because my brain is like this, apparently, when I saw the name Abraham Morgan, I kind of went on another one of those. I was like, only family shares last names, right? And couples. If they were related, like cousins or something, they would have told you, because that’s not so weird. So that left two obvious options. Either,” he held up one finger, “he and Abe are in love and have been together forever, _ or,”  _ he held up two, “Abe’s his son.”

Their food arrived the moment after he said that. Jo watched him a little longer, like she were waiting for him to continue.

Then she laughed.

Lucas laughed with her, but it was strained. Retelling his story had reminded him of what had started all the daydreaming in the first place: the unanswerable journal.

“Lucas, you are incredible. Maybe I should watch some of your short films after all, if they’re that creative.”

“Yeah,” he said with a forced chuckle, then shoved the sandwich into his mouth.

He didn’t... actually believe it, did he? It was a stupid idea he’d come up with to explain the journal, just as stupid as the missing drowning victim. Henry must have copied the penmanship, and Belle must have been mistaken about it having been opened within fifty years. Backwards Land was a psychological condition, not a physical place.

Still. A  _ lot _ of stuff about Henry had fit perfectly into his little daydreams.

Jo’s phone rang. She glanced at Lucas, and he shrugged; she answered without getting up, continuing to work on her chicken.

He thought about that day not long ago when Henry had finally decided to join them all for drinks. He’d ordered cognac, because of course he had, and had even suffered through a hug. Lucas, shocked that someone had finally gotten through to him, had commented something about the impossible finally happening. Henry’s answer to that had stuck in Lucas’s memory because of how out-of-place it was.

_ ‘Well, you live long enough, anything’s possible.’ _

It wasn’t exactly an incorrect statement, it was just kind of weird considering there was hardly any context, and neither he nor Lucas--nor anyone else at the table--had been all that old. Lucas had chalked it up to Henry _ feeling _ old because he’d gotten worn down enough to change his habits.

Thinking back, he could pick out lots of other little comments like that one. Come on; the man was barely 35, and he started half his sentences with  _ ‘in my experience’. _

“What?” Jo said, startling Lucas. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

She met his eyes, but she was still talking into the phone. Seeming to remember that he was there, she leaned down and dug through her bag, then sat up again to push a packet into his hands. He barely dropped his sandwich in time to accept it.

He looked over the paper: it was his list of names, the one he’d compiled out of the people who had access to the bodies.

“Clark Walker,” she said.

Lucas hesitated, then jumped to scour his list for the name. He was suddenly grateful he’d alphebatized them.

“Thank you, Hanson. And thank the Lieutenant for me. She didn’t have to do that.” Pause. “Yeah, I know.”

That’s it for the morgue and transportation staff. The mortuary list was the bulky part, but Lucas scanned through it as quickly as he could.

“Mm-hmm. Great. Alright, thanks.” She hung up the phone. “Lieutenant Reece pulled a few strings to get the court order through for Bellevue.”

Lucas flipped pages, stopping at the ends of lists, scanning the Ws. He began to worry, particularly as the list got thinner. It didn’t really mean anything, did it? Maybe it was just that Lucas’s investigative powers were as shit as he assumed they-

“There he is!” Lucas exclaimed, despite himself. On literally the last page. What were the chances?

“You found him?” Jo rounded the table to look over his shoulder, and Lucas showed her the page.

“One of the last employees listed at the student hospital.”

“Janitorial,” Jo said, echoing the label at the top of the column.

“This is our guy.”

“We need to go.” She grabbed the paper and started heading out.

“Wait- um,” Lucas stood and swivelled around to face the counter, raising one hand. “Excuse me, can we get a couple to-go boxes?”


	7. Clark Walker

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the unannounced 2-week haitus! (Then again my general weekly schedule was never specifically announced, either.) Barring catastrophe, my uploads should go back to normal--although it should be mentioned that next week is my birthday. I think I'll manage to upload anyway, but it might wind up being a day late. Figured it'd be a bit weird if I didn't mention that, given the context.
> 
> So, how was everyone's h.... who am I kidding. Let's just read some fanfiction

Jo didn’t drive him back to the precinct, but somewhere else entirely. Lucas shrank back into his seat as he realized that she didn’t seem to be paying a lot of heed to the speed limits, and even less to yellow lights.

There was a reason he never drove in New York City, and apparently that reason was Josephine Martinez.

They finally came to a stop outside a narrow apartment building, red-brick with squat windows, and Jo turned toward him as she shut off the car. “Stay here.”

“What? Is- are we at Walker’s place?”

“That’s what Hanson said. Stay here.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She shut the door, and a moment later disappeared into the building. 

Lucas tried to relax in the car. Sure, she was going in after a murderer, but she’d be fine. This was her job. He kept thinking of Richard’s autopsy, though, the exacting care with which Walker had copied Henry’s methods, the precision with which he’d stabbed Raj, if that was him. The guy was dangerous. Like, more dangerous than other killers.

All he could do was sit out here and worry.

He watched the front of the building, half-expecting someone to burst out the door or start scurrying down the fire escape. But there was nothing, like it was a regular day.

His phone rang and he jumped, fumbling it into his hand. “Uh, hello?”

_“Hey Lucas, it’s Jo. I’m in apartment 312.”_

“Um, you want me to come up there?”

_“Yeah, it’s clear.”_

He grabbed his bag and got out of the car. He wondered, for a second, if she’d somehow mistaken him for Henry; at the least, for someone who might be remotely useful in a crime scene without a body in it. Maybe it was more of an I’ll-take-what-I-can-get sort of situation.

#

Jo holstered her weapon.

Apartment 312 wasn’t well-cared-for, though that didn’t seem to be for lack of trying. There was a heap of trash on the floor, but at least it was next to the trash can, and a pile of dishes in the sink that had been set to soak a long time ago. The studio had room for a bed against one wall that seemed to also be used as a couch, a TV against the other that had been covered by a flannel blanket, and a little wooden cabinet-end-table that seemed to be acting as the room’s sole divider.

Walker was nowhere in sight.

Lucas came in awkwardly, leaning half-in the open door and surveying the room before taking a single step inside. “Wow. This is bigger than my place.”

“Look for anything that might allude to his plans.”

“Do we have a warrant, or...?”

She met his eyes, gestured to the apartment, not trusting herself to speak. He cleared his throat and nodded, pulling on a pair of gloves.

“Right.”

They searched, rifling through stacks of mail, pawing through cupboards, working more-or-less quietly.

It was nearly three; janitorial shifts could be all over the place, but chances were that he’d either already be here or be at work until normal closing hours. If he wasn’t getting off work soon, then he might not show up at all. Jo kept herself between Lucas and the door just in case.

He stood from beside the bed, frowning as he read what looked like a folded piece of printer paper. 

“Find something?”

He jumped at the sound of her voice. “What?”

She nodded toward him. “What is that?”

“Um. Nothing. Um.” He swallowed, clearly disturbed. When she approached and held her hand out, he relinquished the paper.

It was a piece of printer paper after all, glossy-smooth and folded across the middle, and covered in scribbles written in blue pen ink. They were various sizes and intensities, but the words were all variations of “die” and “immortal”, along with a sketch of what looked like a katana. At the bottom of the page, larger than all the other words and circled with great emphasis, was a familiar name: HENRY MORGAN.

Lucas was white as a sheet. Jo forced herself to laugh.

“Lucas, you don’t actually think-”

“I don’t know where _he_ got that idea,” Lucas rushed to say, “but I got it through my own stupid thought processes. I didn’t hear it somewhere, it wasn’t some preexisting inside joke. I thought of it myself between the drowning thing and the book. I didn’t- I mean, I wasn’t- there’s no way I could’ve-”

“Hey. Lucas, hey.” She put her hand on his arm. “You know it’s not actually possible-”

“I know. I know that, I know that. Definitely.” He swallowed. “But don’t you think it’s weird? Why did he even--where could Walker have--why would he think that about Dr. Morgan? Where did it come from? Can you come up with any other reason for the book with his handwriting in it?”

“Of course there are other reasons. Listen to yourself. You’re actually considering that Henry could be _immortal_. Take a deep breath, alright?”

He nodded and closed his eyes, took in a long, deep breath. “Okay. Yeah.” He let it out slowly.

“You good?”

“Yeah. Sorry.”

“Now, this is a good find.” She set the paper down; they didn’t have a search warrant, and wouldn’t be able to use any evidence they took with them in court. If anyone found out they were here, they wouldn’t be able to use anything in the apartment at all. “Look for more things like that, okay?”

“Okay.”

Crisis averted, they went back to work. She watched him for a little longer, out of the corner of her eye, and kept the other corner on the door. They should get out of here sooner than later, but if they could get any hint of what Walker’s plans were...

She knelt by the end table that marked the transition between the living space and the kitchen. It was a small wooden unit with a cabinet door. Locked. She leaned against it to search the floor, and the top shifted under her hand. She sat up, lifted the wooden surface, and found the small key resting inside.

“Lucas,” she called.

Lucas approached while she fit the key into the lock. When she opened the cabinet, an avalanche of papers pushed out of the narrow, overstuffed shelves.

“Oh, shit,” said Lucas, collecting a few of them. They were mostly the same glossy printer paper, but occasionally a different stock. A lot of them had the same style and motif: “immortal” over and over, along with “die” and “transform”, and occasionally “Dr.”. Along with these papers, however, were several photos printed with imperfect ink, like a few of the colors were on the verge of running out.

All of them were photos of Henry, from various distant angles. Biking, walking to work, even standing in the windows of the antiques shop. The whitespace of the photo papers were largely left alone, except one of them had a large, foreboding pair of words written in red pen: MUST DIE.

“Okay,” Lucas said, as much a nervous sigh as an actual word. “Okay, we need to find this guy.”

Jo sorted through the papers, spotting one that was different from the others. It was an empty bill envelope with handwriting on the back, like a quick note on scratch paper.

It was an address. A hotel in Montreal, complete with a room number.

“You don’t think...” Jo stopped herself. “No. There’s no way he’d know.” A clicking sound drew her attention; Lucas was typing into his phone. “Wait, what are you-”

“Got a phone number.” He showed her the search results page.

“Okay, let’s go.”

She pushed all of the papers and photos back into the end table, locked it, and re-hid the key.

Walker hadn’t shown up at all. By the looks of the sink, he might have been gone for as long as a day.

The same amount of time as Henry?

Jo led the way outside, and closed the door behind her.

#

“Are we thinking that’s where Henry and Abe went?” Lucas asked once they got back into the car, breaking Jo out of her thoughts.

She shook her head. “I’m not sure. If it is, how could Walker have found them before us? If he was following them, how did the address wind up in his apartment?”

“Maybe it’s his own fallback in case _he_ has to cut and run.”

“That wouldn’t have a specific room number. But we don’t want to call unless we _know_ it’s Henry.” She paused. “Hold on.”

She took out her own phone and dialed, thought for a second, and put it on speaker. She mimed for Lucas to stay quiet.

 _“Hey, Jo,”_ said Mike’s voice.

“Walker wasn’t home. Do you have his bank and phone records?”

_“No phone yet, but I’m looking at his bank records and criminal history right now.”_

“Criminal history?”

_“Yeah. Assault and battery, several counts. He wasn’t the friendliest inmate, either; had to sign up for daily counseling at Bellevue to get out of extended jail time.”_

“Daily counseling?” Jo said urgently. “When’s his next session?”

 _“Uh, hold on.”_ The sound of typing. _“Right now. Actually, just past. Is it that late already?”_

“So he should be on his way home?”

Lucas stiffened, glancing around the street. 

_“Wait. He missed his appointment today. The file was just now flagged. It’s the first appointment he’s ever missed.”_

Jo’s heart sank. “What about his bank records?”

_“Nothing specific. Bills, rent, take-out... oh, here we go, an Amtrak purchase. Must be a long trip, by the price of the ticket.”_

“What time?”

_”He bought it this morning, around five AM. No fast way to tell what train it’s for, I’ll have to look into it.”_

“Please.” She and Lucas exchanged a glance. “I don’t think we have much time.”

 _“Hey, Jo, you’re not...”_ He lowered his voice. _“You’re not planning anything, are you? I know you and Henry are close, but he hasn’t been spotted in the tapes yet. He might be in the clear as it is.”_

“Don’t worry, Mike. I’ll see you later.” She hung up, disquieted.

“Maybe we should go back,” said Lucas. “Tell them what we found out.”

She shook her head. “We weren’t allowed to go in, and don’t have a reason to use the address. A train to Montreal can take anywhere from ten to twelve hours.”

“How do we know if he’s going to Montreal?”

“There’s one way to find out. Show me that phone number.”

“But what if it’s Walker?”

“I don’t think time is our friend. If Walker’s tracked Henry down, we need to know now.”

“Okay, yeah.” He unlocked his phone again and showed her the hotel’s number. She dialed before she could rethink it, pressed speaker.

A woman answered, with a light accent. _“Good afternoon, thank you for calling Lindgren Hotel. How may I help you?”_

“Room 108, please.”

_“I’ll connect you, one second.”_

Ringing. There was no other sound in the car but the muffled ringing.

Pick-up. A single breath.

 _“Who is this?”_ It was Henry’s voice, quiet and nervous, like he’d been dreading a call.

Jo couldn’t help a sigh of relief, and she heard the same from Lucas beside her. “Henry, it’s Jo.”

 _“What? Jo? How did you get this number?”_ He sounded more alarmed than anything else. Meaning she wasn’t the caller he’d expected.

“That’s the thing, Henry. We found out who’s been framing you. His name is Clark Walker.”

 _“Jo, you have to stay away from him.”_ She recognized the urgency in his voice; it was the sound of someone being in immediate danger, the way he got when they were a hair’s breadth away from cracking a case. _“Don’t go anywhere near him.”_

Lucas glanced over at the apartment building with raised eyebrows.

Jo glared at the phone. “I knew you knew who he was. How long has he been chasing you, Henry?”

_“Long enough for me to know how dangerous he is. Stay away from the case, Jo. I don’t care if you have to find me guilty by default, as long as you stay very far away.”_

She knew he didn’t trust her, but put so explicitly it was like a punch to the gut. “Hey, Henry, I’m not a little girl. I’m an officer of the NYPD, and you’re the one who’s in immediate danger. Walker knows where you are. He’s on a train heading there right now, if he’s not there already. You need to get out of that hotel.”

_“Yes, that’s the plan. Jo, don’t worry about me. I am sorry that it had to end like this, but there was no other way. I did enjoy working with you.”_

He was trying to say goodbye?

Lucas leaned in. “Hey, Henry-”

_“Lucas?!”_

“Yeah, hey, I just have one quick little question. You’re not immortal, are you?”

Silence.

Jo hit him on the arm. “Lucas, that isn’t funny. We found a bunch of ravings in Walker’s apartment. It was tough to make sense of them, but it looks like he thinks you’re immortal.”

 _“Oh.”_ Henry laughed. _“Yeah, he’s... the only thing I really know about the man is that he’s insane. Wait. You were in his apartment?”_

“That’s where we found your room number, Henry. You need to get out of there as soon as possible.”

_“Oh. Yes. Thank you. I will. But please promise me, Jo-”_

“I will not promise to sit on the sidelines while some psychopath hunts you down, Dr. Morgan. Why won’t you trust me to help you?”

_“This is different. You don’t understand how dangerous he is-”_

“More dangerous than the murderers you’ve helped me bring in?”

 _“Yes, Jo! Don’t you see? Yes! Leaving was the only possible way to keep you safe. If he finds out how much I care about you-”_ He paused. _“If he’s watching me, he’ll notice how long I’ve been on the phone. He’ll think I’m talking to someone in New York.”_

“Henry, don’t-”

He hung up.

“Wow,” Lucas remarked nervously. “This guy’s really got him spooked, huh?”

“I only hope I was able to warn him in time. If we could get help from local law enforcement...”

“But he’s technically a fugitive, isn’t he?”

Jo glanced over. “Look up Amtrak trains to Montreal.”

“What? Oh!” He set off typing into his phone, rapidfire. 

“We need an idea of the worst case scenario. Can you find the earliest train Walker could have taken?”

“Yeah. Just one... sec...”

She tensed her hands on the wheel. _Damn it, Henry._ Not only did he not trust her with his safety, but he didn’t trust her with her own safety, either. Had he really distanced himself so thoroughly from people, that he couldn’t conceive of someone actually helping him?

This was one lesson he was going to learn, one way or another. 

“Okay!” said Lucas, inspecting his phone. “The earliest train this morning was 6:15, train 1035. Right now, that’s in... Plattsburgh.”

“When is it scheduled to arrive in Montreal?”

“Um, 5:24.”

“Shit.” Less than three hours. It was enough time for Henry and Abe to run, but not enough time for the warrant to come through for anyone to stop Walker. She and Lucas were the only people in a position to track him down.

Lucas grimaced. “Well, we did warn him. Will that be enough?”

“We don’t know how Walker got that address in the first place. He might just do it again.”

“Well—isn’t there anything we can do?”

Jo met his gaze.

“What?”

#

Lucas hadn’t been on a plane in a long time. They’d found an hour-long flight leaving fairly quickly, had run through the terminal, and now found themselves sitting beside one another during takeoff. It turned out, security was a lot smoother and faster when you didn’t have any luggage--or any weapons.

He hadn’t closed out at work. Hopefully Dr. Washington noticed and set someone to do it for him.

Jo had insisted at first that he stay home. If Walker was as dangerous as Henry reported, then Lucas shouldn’t accompany her. He’d pushed back stalwartly until she relented, but now he wasn’t sure why he’d done it.

His primary thought was that Jo was doing something stupid, and friends being stupid needed a friend to back them up. But this wasn’t a drunk escapade to the bar where Jo had gotten dumped, this was tracking down a murderer to save someone’s life. What Jo needed wasn’t a friend, but a SWAT team.

Maybe he should’ve stayed home, and told someone about her plan. It might have gotten her fired, but it might have saved her life.

Too late now. Besides, Lucas had other things to worry about.

He didn’t bring it up, because Jo had started--understandably--to get worried, but the ‘Henry=immortal’ bug had latched on for good.

It wasn’t only that Walker’s rantings had also said ‘Henry=immortal’, completely separately from Lucas’s train of thought. Although it had been _completely separate._ Lucas’s logic had come from an old notebook Walker didn’t know about. Wherever Walker had gotten his idea, it’d been from somewhere else, and wasn’t that a huge coincidence? Two different trains of thought leading to the same bizarre conclusion?

Anyway, it wasn’t only that. It was Henry’s reaction, too, when Lucas had asked him outright.

Of course Henry had denied it; whether or not it was true, what else could he say? But when Lucas had asked, there’d been silence. Not a ‘what?’ not an ‘are you okay, Lucas?’ but a stunned silence. Then Jo had given Henry an out, and he’d laughed. It had sounded like a nervous laugh.

Or it was a regular laugh, and Lucas was just going nuts?

“It’s not too late,” Jo said, misreading his apprehension, even though they were already in the air. “You don’t have to come to the hotel with me.”

“How did Walker know where to find Henry?”

“I don’t know. He was stalking him; maybe he put a bug in Abe’s car.”

“Don’t you think we should tell someone? Maybe at least Detective Hanson.”

The troubled look on her face made him regret bringing it up. It wasn’t like her to go off on her own like this; he hadn’t thought about how much willpower it must have taken.

They fell silent for a little while, watching the clouds.

“I’m just... worried about him,” she admitted quietly. “He thinks he has to do this all on his own.”

“Well, he does have Abe.”

“And how long has it been since he’s had anyone else?”

Lucas frowned. If Henry was immortal, then that sort of made sense, too, didn’t it? How could someone who didn’t age make lasting friends, if he wanted to keep his secret?

No. Damn it, Henry wasn’t immortal. That was impossible.

Besides, why would someone who couldn’t die be so afraid of someone who could? Then again, Henry had said he was mostly concerned about Jo’s safety. If you can’t kill Superman, you go for Lois Lane, after all.

Did Lucas just compare Jo to Lois Lane? If she ever got wind of that, he’d be dead long before he could figure out if he was crazy.

Did that make him Jimmy Olsen?

He closed his eyes and tried to force himself to think about something else. Like Belle. Long blue hair. No engagement ring on her finger. Had she been lying about the engagement? No, she’d taken it off for work, obviously. A long string of painful memories: sitting on that top step at the museum, watching the fountain, eating hot dogs...

Henry had sounded desperate when Jo had asked if Walker was dangerous. Adamant that he was unlike any murderer they’d faced before. What if Walker was immortal, too? What if that’s what made Henry so afraid of him?

No! No, this was getting insane. Lucas would need to start going to therapy if he kept this up. Besides, immortal people didn’t have pigsty studio apartments with ravings shoved in an end table cabinet. They had antique shops and three-piece suits, and carefully-tended golden pocket watches. They were familiar with running away; had to do it whenever anyone seemed like they might piece together the truth.

150 years of never staying in one place for too long? No wonder the guy would be lonely.

One of the reasons Belle had broken up with him was because he always had his head in the clouds. He stared out at them through the window and wondered how true that was.


	8. Divide and Conquer

Through their tracking of that worst-case early train, Jo could sense their time growing short. They’d spent too much time in the air; train 1035 had arrived in Montreal by the time Jo and Lucas made it out of the airport. 

“If there’s no one there, you stay in the lobby,” she told him, after giving directions to the cab driver. “Make sure you keep a security guard in your line of sight. If Walker is there, we have no way of knowing what he’ll do.”

“He’ll go after Henry.” Lucas said it darkly, wiping his palms on his thighs. 

“Maybe. Or maybe he’ll stalk him again and frame him for something else. Don’t ever assume you can predict anyone’s actions, especially someone like Walker.”

“Yes, ma’am. What will you be doing?”

“I’m going to check on Henry. In a perfect world, he’s checked out already and gotten rid of Walker’s bug. If not, I need to talk to him.”

“If he’s still there-“

“If he’s still there, I’m sticking around to protect him from Walker. Your job will be to get yourself and Abe away from us, somewhere safe. A police station, if you can.”

“What if Walker isn’t here at all?”

“Then we’ll all come home alive and unharmed.”

“And if Abe doesn’t want to leave Henry?”

She shot him a look that made him visibly shrink in his seat. “This isn’t about want. This is about saving lives. Get him out of there. I don’t know what Henry’s thinking, if Walker really is as dangerous as he says he is-“

“He’s doing what he thinks he has to.” Lucas’s voice was quiet as he watched Montreal flit past the window. “He always does, doesn’t he?”

She softened, matching his tone. “That’s exactly the problem. He thinks he has to do this on his own. It’s like he doesn’t see me at all.”

Lucas glanced over, and she realized she’d misspoken. 

“I mean any of us. His friends. The entire force would have been there for him if he’d just come clean to begin with.”

Lucas twisted his mouth into a frown and nodded. 

She put one hand on his knee. “Hey. It’s going to work out.”

“Get Abe and go to the police?”

“Make sure you stick together. That’s all you have to do.”

“Might be harder than it sounds. If Abe and Henry are like family...” he paused with a distant look, but quickly shook himself out of it. “I got it, anyway. You just make sure Henry’s okay.”

“I will.”

#

The lobby of the Lindgren Hotel was intimate. Cushioned chairs and couches facing one another, demure coffee tables and deep red walls. Lucas watched as Jo eyed a pair of strangers sitting against the wall, their backs to the sheer-curtained window. He couldn’t tell if she distrusted them for any particular reason, or if she were trying to compare them to the photo of Clark Walker that Hanson had texted her.

He suddenly wished he’d gotten a better look at it himself, and briefly considered asking her for it.

She led him to the counter and leaned against it, grabbing the receptionist’s attention. “Excuse me. Has room 108 checked out yet?”

The receptionist, a young man whose glossy black hair had been combed into an uncomfortably perfect cowlick, closed his mouth abruptly. Bemused, he typed into his computer, seemingly unaware of her urgency.

“Not yet, as far as I can tell. Are you meeting with someone? I can pass along a message, if you like.”

Lucas watched Jo’s shoulders tense from behind. That was the wrong answer.

“No, thank you.” She turned back around. “Lucas, wait-”

Lucas stiffened as her eyes slipped past him, fixing on something behind him, by the hotel door. Was it Walker? Had he already-

An older voice behind him said, “Detective Martinez?”

Lucas turned and recognized Abraham Morgan from the APB. His hands were full with grocery bags, and his face with sheer surprise.

“Where’s Henry?” Jo demanded.

Abe’s expression soured. “I don’t know why you-”

“Lucas,” Jo said, and nodded toward Abe. Lucas jumped.

“Oh! Yeah, on it.”

She nodded and set off down one of the halls. Abe moved to follow her, but Lucas stood in front of him.

“Jo’s here to  _ protect _ Henry, not take him in,” Lucas assured him. “I promise--the NYPD doesn’t even know we’re here. Kind of awkward actually. I don’t know if we thought this through.”

“Who are you?” Abe asked.

“Lucas. Lucas Wahl? I work with Henry. For,” he corrected himself. “Technically. I work _ for _ Henry. I’m his assistant. In the morgue. I think we’ve spoken on the phone once or twice- look, can you come with me?” He gestured to the doors behind Abe.

“No- as nice as it would’ve been to meet you, Henry and I have to get going.”

“Yeah, I know, Jo told me both of you should’ve been gone by now, but since Henry seems to be the one Walker is targeting,” he leaned forward to say the name more quietly, “she asked the two of us to get out of the way.”

Abe looked alarmed by what he’d said, but shook his head. “That’s very kind of her, but Henry and I stick together.”

He started to push past Lucas, who then found himself grabbing hold of the older gentleman by the upper arm.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly, “but I’d rather listen to the police officer, wouldn’t you? She can protect him. We have to get out of here.”

Abe matched his volume. “You think I can’t protect Henry? You think he can’t protect himself?”

“I think we should do what Detective Martinez said and go somewhere safe. It could be really dangerous to stay here.”

“No, Lucas. You two need to go back to New York; Henry and I will be fine. We always are.”

“I know, but-”

Abe’s elbow jabbed into Lucas’s stomach, winding him and forcing him to let go of the arm. Abe and his groceries set off confidently down the hall that Jo had disappeared into.

“Wait, Abe!”

Lucas rushed to intercept him again, but found his path blocked by the receptionist with the cartoony hair. “Is there a problem here?” he asked with his arms crossed, all tough and self-important for a guy who barely came to Lucas’s collarbone, while Abe receded farther into the hall.

Lucas panicked.

“I know about Henry,” he blurted out.

Abe paused. Lucas’s heart fluttered.

“I’ll say it!” he threatened. “I’ll shout it out right here if you don’t come with me.”

When Abe turned around, it was to eye him, a judgmental look. He didn’t think Lucas knew.

Lucas didn’t know. Abe and Henry clearly had a secret; anyone who could cut and run at the drop of a hat must have a secret. It obviously wasn’t the one Lucas and Walker had dreamed up--and wasn’t that fun, having something in common with a violent psychopath--but it was something, and maybe it was enough to get Abe out of the hotel and into safety.

Walker could be anywhere. He could be nearby. He could already be in room 108.

Abe came back toward Lucas, who deflated with relief. The receptionist left them to it only after receiving a confirmation from Abe.

He stopped in front of Lucas. “Alright, but we’ll go-”

Lucas cut him off. “Please don’t talk about where we’re going. I don’t know what kind of bugs or connections Walker has. He knew exactly which  _ room _ you guys were staying in. Let’s just go?”

Abe frowned. “Who’s Walker?”

The question stumped Lucas, and for a moment, they stood watching one another. If Abe and Henry weren’t hiding from Walker, than who from?

“Let’s go?” Lucas repeated, gesturing behind him. “Please?”

#

Jo approached room 108 carefully, keeping one hand free by habit, though she didn’t have a gun to draw if she needed it. She leaned in, listening at the door for voices or any unusual noises. After a few moments of silence, she knocked.

Footsteps. Were they Walker’s or Henry’s? She stood in front of the door, eyes on the peephole, gun hand loose beside her.

The door opened a fraction, revealing a sliver of Henry’s face. Jo relaxed, just slightly, the tension easing from her shoulders.

“Jo?” Henry hissed. “What are you doing here?”

“I was going to ask you the same thing.”

She pushed past him into the room. It had barely enough space for two beds, a closet, and a small desk, with the same dark-red walls and once-plush carpet as the lobby. Abe’s and Henry’s suitcases fit neatly beneath the desk: exactly as much as they needed. The rest, if there was any, likely waited in the car.

Smart. They’d done this before.

Henry closed the door behind her. “I told you, Detective, we have this well under control-”

“No, you don’t.” She searched the small bathroom, glanced behind the thin curtains, leaned around the bed nearest the wall, until she was certain nobody could be hiding. She turned on Henry, hands on her hips. “How did Walker know exactly where to find you?”

“Well, most likely, he followed me here.” The idea didn’t appear to faze him; or if it did, he’d grown used to it over the last few days. He gestured with his hands, like he were giving one of his little lectures.  _ “Here, _ away from you, away from New York.”

“And into Montreal? You wanted to unleash your stalker on Canada instead?”

“That isn’t what I meant-”

“Of course not. You meant to protect me. From what?” She crossed her arms. “I’m a police officer. You aren’t. You haven’t been trained to handle this kind of thing, I have. More than that, Henry, I’m your  _ friend. _ You should have been able to trust me.”

His jaw tensed, a light flexing of muscle, and she knew she’d hit home.

“You should have come to me _ first. _ ” She paced toward him, lowering her voice. “We would’ve been able to help you, Henry. You have more friends on the force than you think you do. We would’ve believed you. Look...” She paused, kept his gaze. “I can tell you’ve been doing this alone for a long time. With Abe, maybe, but other than that, alone. The thing is, you don’t have to be alone anymore. Tell me who this guy is to you, and we can make all this running and hiding stop. For good.”

Henry’s smile was genuine, but also a bit hollow. Like there was something else going on, something she’d missed, something he thought she couldn’t possibly understand.

“Jo,” he started-

“No excuses.”

That stopped him, his eyes casting around as he searched for better words, his mouth stuck partway open with his tongue between his teeth. He swallowed.

“Yes, perhaps I should have gone to you before running. But there is no doubt in my mind that running was necessary.”

“I don’t know, it made you look a lot nicer for Smight’s murder than if you’d stayed and trusted us. We might’ve been able to track down Walker faster with your help.”

Henry spread his hands. “Wait, Walker- you keep saying Walker. What do you know about him?”

“I know he framed you. I know he’s chasing you. I know he’s on his way here right now. We have to move.”

“Where did you get the name?”

“He’s a patient at Bellevue. Listen, Henry, we can go over all of this later, once we’re  _ out of this room.” _

“I can’t leave until Abe returns.”

“He’s with Lucas right now. He’s safe.”

Henry blinked. “You brought _ Lucas-?” _

The door unlocked behind him.

#

Abe and Lucas didn’t go far; not even to the end of the block. Jo probably would have preferred they go farther--well, yes, she would have, she would have preferred they go straight to a police station--but it was enough of a victory to get Abe out of the building.

They went to a coffeeshop a little down the block, and Lucas managed to snag them a table in the back where it would take Walker more than a passing second to find them. Neither of them seemed interested in ordering, so Lucas hoped none of the baristas would notice.

“Tell me,” said Abe, directly, the moment they sat at the little round table.

“Mm?” Lucas stiffened.

“Tell me what you know about Henry. And keep your voice down.”

Abe watched him, no-nonsense, the laughter lines sagging disused on his face. Lucas opened and closed his mouth. He didn’t have a bluff for this, and if he came up with nothing, then Abe would run off and put himself in danger.

He only had the one thing. It wasn’t the right one; but maybe if he dragged it out, he’d be able to keep Abe here a while longer before he realized Lucas was talking out of his ass.

“I... found a journal,” he said. “In your basement. It was a red journal with Henry’s handwriting.” He spoke carefully, trying to phrase it in a way that could plausibly be something criminal. Maybe he could guess what the secret was--the one that Abe seemed afraid of--by the time he was done talking. Probably not.

“Alright,” Abe prompted, a little rotating motion with one hand.

“Well, I took it to be... um, evaluated... by a friend of mine. A specialist. And she confirmed that... what I was looking at... was the real thing. So I did some thinking, and I realized... a bunch of stuff about Henry just made a bit more sense, you know? The, um, way he dresses, the way he acts. The things he says.”

Nope. He was running out of things to say that skirted the issue, and Abe’s flat stare gave him no clues whatsoever.

Lucas cleared his throat.

“I didn’t believe it, of course. I still kind of-” he cut himself off. How could he threaten Abe with something if he admitted he didn’t believe it? “Well, anyway, it was mostly just a sort of... musing. But then Jo and I went to Walker’s apartment-”

“Wait,  _ who _ is Walker?”

Thank God, a different topic.

Lucas answered at a whisper. “Clark Walker. You know, the guy framing Henry for the murders?”

“Murders?” Abe leaned in. “More than one?”

“Yeah. Aside from the taxi driver, there was a guy who’d been autopsied-”

A new voice said, “Excuse me, may I help you?”

Lucas blinked owlishly up at a barista. Frizzy tied-back hair, narrowed distrusting eyes, slim brown arms crossed over a blue apron.

“Do you serve French press?” Abe asked, saving Lucas the need to answer.

“Apologies, no.” She kept her frown. “Espresso drinks or tea by the cup. I’m afraid we don’t do table service.” She said it pointedly, but Abe wore a smile now with such a gentle friendliness to it that Lucas wasn’t sure it was actually the same person that he’d entered with.

“I’ll take a blueberry scone, please,” said Abe, and handed her three of those little blue five-dollar bills. “Keep the change.”

The barista’s eyes narrowed further and her lips pressed together, but she accepted the money and left.

Abe leaned back and crossed his arms. “Last chance, Lucas. What do you know about Henry?”

Damn. Not off the hook yet.

“Okay- well, like I said, I wasn’t totally believing it. But when we got to Walker’s apartment, I realized he was onto it, too. I don’t really know how, but it was weird, you know? How did he even find out about it? I mean, I had the journal, and the back of the taxi, and my own weird brain, but where did _Walker_ get it? So then when Jo called Henry, I thought, why not just _ask_ him? Has anyone tried asking him? Of course that was stupid and he said nothing, I should’ve seen that coming. I’m sure people have _asked_ , if they ever got that far, but it wouldn’t really be that smart if you rolled over every time someone went up to you like, ‘hey Henry, are you immortal?’ and if there’s one thing I know about Henry, it’s that he’s damn smart.”

Abe’s face went pale.

“Oh,” Lucas said, “Sorry about the language. I really try not to curse too often, because you never know...”

But then he tracked a little farther back in his ranting, and realized what he’d said. He’d gotten into the hang of the story and completely forgotten about what he was supposed to be doing with it. Damn! Abe was going to realize that Lucas had nothing, then hightail it back to the hotel, potentially barging into some shootout between Jo and Walker.

Abe’s pallor didn’t say ‘Gotcha’, though. In fact, it said something more like, ‘oh, shit’.

Could it actually...

“Scone,” said the barista, and both of them jumped. She raised her eyebrows at them as she put the plated scone on the table, then shook her head and walked off.

“What journal did you find, exactly?” Abe asked, leaning in. He spoke at a fraction above a whisper.

Lucas leaned his elbows on the table and tried to match the volume. “Some kind of death journal, from 1886 to 1891. It was a list of deaths chronologically, some with names and some without. Including a Jack the Ripper murder.”

“You took it to someone?”

“Just my ex at the museum. She verified that the journal was 128 years old, but I didn’t tell her why I was asking or where I got it. It didn’t even have Henry’s name in it.” He latched easily onto Abe’s apprehension. Lucas didn’t really know anything about the guy, and wasn’t sure who he would or wouldn’t target to keep Henry’s secret.

Henry’s secret. He was... was it true? Was Henry...? It wasn’t possible, was it? But Abe was acting like...

“How did you know it was his?” Abe asked.

“I look at Henry’s handwriting all the time. I recognized it immediately. I took it back to the morgue, though, and compared it side-by-side with one of his reports. It was a dead match.” He felt the need to clarify. “I didn’t show anyone else there. Since Henry’s become a murder suspect, nobody wants to talk to me.” 

“So?” Abe asked, still quiet, still serious. “What are you planning to do?”

“Do?” Lucas croaked, a shadowy echo. Abe was acting like...

“You dragged me out here for a reason. What’s your plan? Blackmail?”

Abe was acting like Backwards Land was a real place.

“No,” Lucas made himself say. “I... I- no. I just wanted... you to... I was just trying to distract you from the hotel, because Jo was- I don’t want- it’s _ true?” _

“What?”

“Henry’s  _ actually _ over 150 years old?”

Abe’s mouth snapped shut. Lucas watched him try to puzzle out if he could still convince him that it wasn’t true at all.

“Listen,” Lucas hissed as quietly as he dared, “I promise you, I don’t want to do anything. I don’t have any plan. I pieced this together from my own weirdness and I didn’t tell any- wait, okay, I told Jo, but only as a joke and she flat-out didn’t believe me  _ or _ Walker. Actually, literally, my whole and entire purpose in coming here was to save Henry from Walker, who’s definitely in town and might physically be nearby right this second. I just really need you to bear with me for a moment, okay? I need you to trust me, and I need you to answer a question, because it’s burning me up and I genuinely want Henry to be alright, and when all this is said and done, the only thing I want from either of you is for Henry to come back to work and for everything to go back to normal. I know you don’t know me, but please believe me. I just want Henry to come home safe. That’s all.”

Abe’s frown stretched his wrinkles in a new way, like it wasn’t an expression he wore often. “What’s your question?”

Lucas swallowed. “Does Henry, like, teleport away when he dies?”

It was the only thing left. It was what would tie everything together: the taxi, the journal, Walker, the familiarity Henry and Abe had with running off. It would put the whole case into a single, neat little box--impossible, but neat.

Abe studied Lucas for a long moment, eyes tracking between both of his.

He nodded.

Lucas fell back in his seat, breathless.

Henry had been the one locked in the back of the taxi. The one with the scratches. The image of him struggling to breathe, scrambling to escape, the pocket watch dropping senselessly to the floor; that was _ real. _ Walker had done that to him, had actually killed him, and Henry had disappeared, because he was immortal and had once personally surveyed the violence that had been done to Mary Kelly. The experience had spooked Henry--maybe because Walker knew about him, maybe because he was planning to expose him somehow, maybe just because drowning in the back of a taxi was intolerable on the best of days--and he and Abe had run, because they’d long grown used to it, because you couldn’t form relationships anywhere over ten years or so if you perpetually looked 35.

Dr. Morgan was immortal. 

Abe said, “I’m going to tell Henry you know.”

Lucas blinked, coming back to his senses.

“It’ll be up to him whether we stay or move, but I’m telling him.”

“Fine. Sure. That makes sense. Guy’s got to do what a guy’s got to do. I promise, I’m not going to tell anyone- who would I tell, anyway?” He started to laugh but reined it in abruptly, producing a weird whine instead. “I won’t even mention it online. No one’s really anonymous on the Internet and nothing ever really gets deleted. Nope, it’s safe with me, even if Henry decides he doesn’t believe that.”

It was quiet between them for a moment.

“Hope he does, though,” Lucas added, chiefly to fill the silence. “I know he mostly only tolerates me, but I really look up to him, you know? I didn’t mean to... to pry so much. It just kind of happened.”

Was he apologising?

Abe shook his head. “You’re a smart kid, you know that?”

“Common misconception,” Lucas said, his mouth dry. “I’m twenty-eight.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just realized how coincidental it is that I turned 28 today


	9. Talking to Henry Morgan

Henry pushed Jo into the tiny closet around the corner from the bathroom, so that she couldn’t be seen from the door. Which also meant that she couldn’t see who it was that groaned the door open.

She wished she had her gun, a bat, anything she could be ready to pounce out with.

Henry watched the newcomer with a determined apprehension, and didn’t so much as glance over to Jo. Refusing to betray her presence.

The hotel room door closed in silence.

“Why have you chased me all the way here?” Henry asked, his jaw tense. “I left, that’s what you wanted, isn’t it? What do you _want?”_

The scrape of metal, like a blade being drawn from a scabbard. Jo thought of the stab wound that had killed Raj, the sketch of the katana on printer paper in Walker’s apartment.

“Kill me, Henry.” She didn’t recognize the voice. She watched Henry inch backward into the room, but she didn’t see Walker follow him.

There was a heavy _clink,_ like something being set down, but if Jo leaned out of the closet then Walker might see her. Damn it.

Walker continued, “With this.”

Henry looked down at the thing Walker meant. He’d placed it on the floor.

A thousand emotions crossed Henry’s face; Jo watched his eyebrows flicker, and a sort of fear developed in his eyes. He finally said, “You’re insane. I won’t do it.”

The silence lingered heavy between them. Jo carefully, silently, lifted one of the wooden hangers from the bar. It was far from a weapon, but it was the closest thing she had to one on hand.

“It’s the only way,” Walker said, at length. “Kill me. I _must_ die.”

Jo thought of those words under Henry’s picture: _MUST DIE._ Had it meant Walker all along? Why?

Henry gritted his teeth, shook his head, even as he took another step back. “Then find it somewhere else, because it won’t be at my hand. Not ever.”

“Then... you leave me no choice.”

Jo didn’t like the sound of that.

There was another scrape of steel, and Walker leapt across the hotel room. Henry glanced at Jo with dawning horror in the fraction of a moment it took for her to start moving.

She ducked out of the closet and rushed Walker, but he’d caught sight of Henry’s gaze and turned to meet her, a long, curved sword in one hand. She’d never trained against a sword, and found herself treating it like a large knife as she dove out of the way.

Henry tried--and more-or-less failed--to attack while Walker’s back was turned, and Jo took the opportunity to kick the sword out of his hand and grapple him. Walker didn’t seem trained in combat, exactly, but his body was tight as a whipcord and he moved with a quickness and strength that made him difficult to predict. He twisted out of her grapple and landed a punch on her gut that winded her; and the next second, he had her pinned to the ground, hands crushing her throat.

She wound one arm through his wrists to twist him off, but he leaned so heavily on her that she saw spots. His head jerked up and Jo registered the blanket that had been garotted around his neck before she lost a moment of vision to her coughing and gasping for air. When she got it back, she forced one leg up into a kick at Walker’s crotch even as she continued to wheeze, and he toppled off of her.

Jo braced herself against the floor and struggled to open her windpipe, blood rushing in her ears, but the scuffle continued behind her, interrupted breaths and the knocks and scrapes of shoes and furniture. She turned, one hand bracing the throbbing pain in her neck--and Henry, wide-eyed and desperate, jabbed a Lindgren Hotel pen into the base of Walker’s throat.

She couldn’t hear the fresh silence over her own ragged breathing, but the spray of blood was clear enough, as was Walker’s staggering back and hitting his knees against the corner of the bed, tripping to the floor. Henry stared, frozen, as Walker choked out a few final breaths.

Jo climbed to her feet, one hand bracing the fire in her neck and the other supporting her weight on the small table. Henry only stood watching Walker die, breathing hard, his face contorted in shock.

“‘Enry,” she wheezed, stumbled to find his hand. “Look ‘t me.”

“I don’t understand,” Henry said distantly, his eyes locked on Walker’s body. “He... He should...”

She squeezed his hand and grimaced through a swallow. “‘Enry.”

“That’s not him,” he whispered.

Jo tugged on his hand rather than try to rasp his name again. Finally, Henry met her eyes.

“You’re hurt.” His voice was dampened, the urgency shrouded by his own shock.

She motioned behind him, to the hotel phone.

Looking a bit lost, he turned and found what she was pointing at. “You’re hurt. Ambulance. Yes.” He fumbled with the phone.

Jo found his hand again and squeezed it. Henry met her eyes and smiled, let out a haggard breath.

She smiled back at him.

Henry was safe.

#

It was clearly difficult for Lieutenant Reece to chew Jo out over the phone while she was laid up in a Canadian hospital, but did her best. Jo recognized that the Lieutenant’s heart wasn’t in it, but she also recognized the suspension and the mark on her record. She’d been a perfect cop until this moment.

Henry was alive, though. That’s what mattered. Walker was gone, and Henry was fine.

Henry himself hadn’t left her side, not that she noticed. He must have given his statement to the police, but if he did, she never saw it herself. The Lieutenant mentioned that she’d spoken with the local force, so it was likely they had the full story. All Jo really knew was that he was never away from her long enough to have been booked for anything.

“I understand,” she whispered into the phone.

_“Good,”_ said Reece’s voice. _“Now get well soon and get back here, so I can give you a good rebuking in person.”_

“Yes, sir.”

They said their goodbyes, and she handed the phone to Henry for him to hang up again.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

“Going to ask you the same thing.” She took his hand in hers.

He opened his mouth to answer, then closed it with a tense swallow. She knew that distant look in his eyes, knew it too well.

“It’s alright,” she said, gently as she could. “Wise man once told me... when killing someone doesn’t affect you, that’s when you’ve got real problems.”

“I wouldn’t listen to him,” Henry said softly. “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

“I disagree. When you’re ready to talk... I’m here.” She squeezed his hand again. “Okay?”

He pressed his lips together, but the answer was clear enough in his eyes.

The hospital phone interrupted them. He answered it for her, as he had been doing; sparing her the need to talk as much as possible. This time, however, he took the call farther away from her, speaking out the window.

It reminded her of that day, so long ago, when Henry had seen her awake from a bullet wound received on the roof of Grand Central. She’d hardly known him back then; all she’d really known was that he was shockingly smart, and that he’d saved her life by setting her on fire.

He spoke into the phone with a grim expression, tension in his jaw, in the corners of his eyes.

How long had he been running, alone, from Walker? How long had he gone without trusting a single person beyond Abe?

At least now he knew he didn’t have to anymore.

#

Lucas paced outside the hospital room. Abe had put off telling Henry so far, given that there’d been more pressing things going on, but apparently he intended on doing it now.

“What if we just don’t tell him?” Lucas said, stopping abruptly. “What if-”

“No.”

He set off pacing again. “Ugh, things are going to be so weird at work now. He’s going to be there like, ‘in my experience, it takes two hours to die of exsanguination from a calf wound,’ and I’m going to be thinking about the time Henry bled out from a calf wound, and then _he’s_ going to be thinking about _me_ thinking about the time he bled out from a calf wound, and nothing’s ever going to get done.”

“Lucas, there’s nothing you can say that’ll keep me from telling him.”

“I know!” He threw up his hands theatrically. “And I’m not saying you’re wrong. I just wish I hadn’t thought of it. My stupid brain is so stupid weird. Why did I even _go_ there?”

Abe frowned. “You’re not stupid for puzzling it out, Lucas. You’re brilliant. As far as I know, you’re the first person that’s ever found out that way.”

Lucas stopped. “I’m the first person? Really?”

“As far as I’m aware.”

That was... cool, and all, but it somehow made Lucas feel worse. He was the only person to think it up seriously, because he was _insane._ Regular people didn’t believe in Backwards Land; just him and Clark Walker.

The hospital door opened and they both turned toward it. Henry paused in the doorway, glancing between them uncertainly. “Hello.”

Lucas turned to Abe again. “Actually, we really don’t need to-”

“Henry,” said Abe, ignoring Lucas completely, “you’re not going to like this.”

“Oh, my God.” Lucas put one hand on his forehead, pacing away.

Henry shut the door behind him. “What is it?” he asked, his voice low.

“Lucas figured it out.”

“Figured what out?”

Lucas shook his head, swiping one hand frantically across his throat, but Abe didn’t so much as glance over.

Abe gestured to Henry. “It. You. He figured it out, all by himself.”

Henry stiffened visibly, and his face went pale. He turned to Lucas, who leapt in back toward them.

“It was an accident,” he rushed to say. “I didn’t mean- I’m not trying to- I found your journal and it all kind of just tumbled out from there. That and the taxi. Mostly the taxi. Okay, it was both of them.”

“The... taxi?” 

“Yeah, Mr. Patel’s taxi? You were trapped in the-” he stopped himself, acutely aware of Abe’s hesitance to actually say any corollary words out loud, and made a gliding motion with one hand. “When it went in the...?”

“How did you...” Henry’s eyes went wide. “My watch.”

“Yeah. And the marks in the back, and no body, and no way for a body to have floated out somehow.” He laughed awkwardly. “Um. But look- I’m not going to tell anybody, alright? Nobody. My lips are sealed.” He mimed locking his lips and throwing away the key.

“But who else might have-?”

“Nobody.” Lucas spread out his hands, a crossing motion. “Nobody, I swear to you. No one else thought the marks would mean there’s a drowning victim, they all thought I was insane. And by all I just mean Jo, because I didn’t talk to anyone else about it. A-and I’m the only person who had your journal, except I did show that to Belle, but I didn’t tell her it was yours or what it meant or where it came from.”

“What journal?” He said it in a low, dreading tone, like he was afraid of the answer.

“Um. The one with Mary Kelly in it? It was on the floor.”

Henry closed his eyes and put one hand over his forehead, turned to lean back against the hospital wall. “I left a journal behind.”

“Um. Yeah, but-”

“Someone could have _found_ that. Someone _did_ find it! This is terrible. I’m getting sloppy, Abe.”

Lucas ducked into Henry’s sight again. “Hey, yeah, but it’s just me. No worries, right? Look, I’ll even give it back.” He fished through his shoulder bag and came out with a little plastic-covered red book. “It’s yours. No harm done.”

Henry frowned and seemed to actually regard Lucas for the first time since this conversation had begun. “You figured it out?”

Lucas glanced at Abe uncertainly, but he just stood watching, waiting for Henry.

He cleared his throat, still holding out the journal. “Yeah, I guess.”

“You didn’t _see_ me do anything, no one told you what to look for. You just...” Henry accepted the evidence bag, glancing over the book’s red cover. “You just read this journal and _figured it out?”_

“And the taxi,” Lucas added. “And Clark Walker’s notes, but I don’t know how _he_ got it.”

“He had his own sources,” Henry said darkly.

“Oh.” Lucas swallowed. “So, um. Are we cool?”

Henry blinked at him. “Are we what?”

“Cool. You know I won’t tell anyone,” he swore all over again, his heart racing. “Not a single word. Not to anybody, not even Jo. Not even Abe! You know what, I can forget completely about it. What were we talking about?” He gave a nervous chuckle.

The look Henry gave him was completely lost. Beyond ‘confused’, deep in ‘bewildered’ territory. His mouth opened slightly and closed again, and he glanced back at Abe, who only shrugged and seemed to defer the decision. To Lucas, Henry said, “Are you... really promising to keep this secret?”

“I am! I am. Absolutely.”

The way Henry stared at him gave Lucas the impression that even rarer than people who figured out his secret on their own were people who promised to keep it.

Henry leaned in. “I will need to keep a close eye on you. I’ll keep my ear to the ground. If I get the idea that so much as one additional person is even slightly more interested in me than they should be-”

“You’ll skip town. I get it, I absolutely get it.” Lucas raised his hands in defense. “I’ve had some time to think about this, and I totally get how that’s just a thing you have to do. But I promise, you won’t have to do it because of me. If there’s anything I can do to help you be able to stay in New York for as long as possible, I’m there. I’m your man.”

Henry regarded Lucas anew. “Really?”

“Really.”

His lips twitched back into something close to smile. “Then...” He let out a sharp breath and shook his head in disbelief. “Let’s get back to work.”


End file.
